Filip Kijowski – PS
performance

“What does tenderness mean to you?” this is the question Filip Kijowski asked passers-by on the streets of Lublin. The answers are surprising and moving. During his new performance, the artist shares his tenderness with the audience and encourages them to create something common.

When: 18/11/2021 (Thursday), 7:00 p.m.
Where: Galeria Labirynt, ul. ks. J. Popiełuszki 5, Lublin
Admission: free

The first presentation of this performance took place during the evening of the Her Docs festival in Warsaw. The artist was inspired by the form of Anda Rottenberg’s book “From Poland with Love. Letters to Harald Szeemann”. “Writing to a person who is no longer alive struck me as something extraordinary and valuable. I thought that I would also like to write to people who were important in my life, those whom I met, and those who left their mark on me in an indirect way,” says Filip Kijowski.

This is how he wrote letters to people both present and absent: to his grandmother, his mother, his friends, the choreographer Martha Graham, the poet Maya Angelou, Raven-Symoné, and even to the Powerpuff Girls… The last letter he wrote was addressed to Tenderness, whom he imagined as a woman. Still, something was missing. That is when he started asking other people what tenderness means to them.

Filip Kijowski’s performance is accompanied by movement. It is a kind of addition to the words, a post scriptum, which carries a mutually important content.