Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Nodes is a project analyzing spells as an example of control over another being. I focused on the violence of persuading somebody to fall in love. I have been considering casting a spell as an influential but not direct act for which specific tools or gestures might be needed. I chose orchids whose roots were used to influence another person, both when it comes to feelings and sexual activity. In the areas of today’s Poland and Italy, dried wild orchid roots were hidden under somebody’s clothes, or an orchid-based powder was added to goat milk which was supposed to help sexual arousal. On the contrary, nowadays, in a huge industrial space, hundreds of almost identical orchids run through a commercial line. Although the production is highly mechanized and managed by technology, the final sculptural touch on every flower goes through the working hands of females — they manually shape this organic material by adding artificial backbones and cutting off the rotten parts. The women use this intimate act to fit the normalized aesthetics. With Nodes, I am bringing attention to the powerful operations both in private and industrial environments by looking at the human element in them.

Female visual artist based in Warsaw. Graduate of the Studio of Spatial Activities by Miroslaw Balka at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (BA, MA, 2018), former student of Candice Breitz and Eli Cortiñas at the HBK in Braunschweig (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Scholarship for 2019/2020), and a guest by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin at the HFBK in Hamburg (2017/2018). She also obtained her BA in Cultural Studies at the University of Warsaw (2013). Currently participant of the Autumn Intensive at the Malmö Art Academy. She exhibited with Catinca Tabacaru Gallery at the Goethe Institut in Bucharest (2024), NS-Dokumentazionszentrum in Munich (2023), MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Manifesta 14 Prishtina, eastcontemporary gallery in Milan (2022), Fabbri Schenker Projects in London, MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome, Center for Contemporary Art Luigi Pecci in Prato (2021), Wschód gallery in Warsaw (2020), Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Starak Family Foundation in Warsaw (2019), Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Fondation Hippocrène in Paris (2018), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2017 – laureate of the Hestia Artistic Journey Competition), and TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin (2016). Art fairs include NADA Villa Warsaw (2024), Artissima, and Arco Madrid (2021). Agnieszka Mastalerz was a resident of Hospitalfield in Scotland (2022), Muzeum Susch in Switzerland, the Artist Development Program at the EIB Institute in Luxembourg (2021), and Futura gallery in Prague (2020, Visegrad Fund). She participated in the Lucy Art Residency public program in Kavala (2022) and in the School of Expressions in PLATO Ostrava (2019). She is a laureate of M?oda Polska scholarship for 2024. Works of her are in Fondazione in Between Art Film by Beatrice Bulgari, Ergo Hestia Group, European Investment Bank, and Warsaw Ghetto Museum collections, as well as in private ones. Since 2021, Mastalerz is represented by eastcontemporary gallery in Milan.