Barbara Gryka: Dirty Blood. De-risking

The protagonist of Barbara Gryka’s exhibition is petroleum—the “dirty blood” that flows in the veins of the post-natural organism that is the world of the Anthropocene era.

Oil is energy and life. It is also death, manifested in the form of environmental pollution, resource wars and the spectre of climate disaster. Oil is the gold of modernity—though black and extracted from the hellish depths of the earth.

It is impossible to talk about it without talking about the modern world—and vice versa. The story created by Barbara Gryka takes the form of a post-Internet opera presented as a multimedia installation.

At the centre of the narrative is the figure of Ignacy Łukasiewicz, a Pole with Armenian roots who, in the 19th century, becomes the starting point of the epic tale of oil-fuelled civilisation that continues to this day. It was Łukasiewicz, a romantic and a patriot living in partitioned Poland, who was the first to recognise the unlimited potential of this raw material, develop the pioneering method of its refining and invent the paraffin lamp, which shed new light on progress. The first crude oil Eldorado was created on Polish soil, near Krosno, where Łukasiewicz began to exploit its reservoirs.

In Barbara Gryka’s narrative, the historical figure is transformed into a mythological one: Łukasiewicz is Prometheus. The artist follows the temper of the inventor and entrepreneur who made his fortune on oil but was also idealistic and philanthropic. Łukasiewicz saw his role in society precisely in Promethean terms. He believed that his discoveries would change the world for the better and push it towards progress. He was not wrong, although there is no doubt that the world built on the foundation of his inventions is radically different from the utopian vision he imagined.

Zeus also makes an appearance in “Dirty Blood”. In ancient beliefs, the god cruelly punished Prometheus for trying to give divine powers to humans. In Barbara Gryka’s work, Zeus takes the form of Rockefeller—a figure symbolising the power of money and the principle of greed. In this version of the mythological story, Prometheus is an employee of a petrol station where the billionaire comes to refuel his car.

Barbara Gryka uses computer animation, artificial intelligence-generated imagery and edited material from the Internet to create the multi-dimensional narrative that reflects the contradictory image of the contemporary world through oil. Oil is the raw material with a huge impact on political, economic and ecological realities. At the same time—extracted from the depths of the earth, from the abyss of time—it is the materialisation of an ancient, chthonic energy unleashed by modern man. The sources of oil are also the sources of wealth and inequality, the fuel for progress and the forces behind wars. The narrative of Gryka’s exhibition thus takes place in the here and now, but also in the universal dimension of a myth. The discourse of the characters, on the other hand, is articulated not in prose, but—as in opera—in the form of poetry and songs, which is perhaps the only form capable of accommodating the complexity and ambivalence of oil. (Stach Szabłowski)

Curator: Waldemar Tatarczuk / 3D animations: Barbara Gryka, Agata Konarska, Daniil Revkovskyi / opera text: Aleksandra Konarska / composer: Piotr Michalczuk / archival video and ai: Daniil Revkovskyi / educational programme: Patryk Dariusz Gacki, Maciej Kryński / singers: Łukasz Konieczny, Anna Werecka / rap: Jan Albert Cieślak, Paweł Bednarczyk-Bahus / cameraman: Marcin Polar.

Funded by: Fundacja Artystyczna Podróż Hestii / Partner: Fundacja Artystyczna Podróż Hestii and STU ERGO Hestia S.A.