My Hut Is On The Edge

This work is part of a collective exhibition Not Giving a Hoot curated by Vítor Nieves.

My Hut Is On The Edge

From the very childhood me and many other people are taught to speak, write and read. Then we use language to express ourselves and communicate. As well as being passed on to us, language, with its idioms and established patterns, shapes us and the way we behave.

It was quite often I heard in my childhood ‘My Hut is on the edge’, meaning it doesn’t concern me and I don’t want to deal with it. What a nice and easy way to say something I wouldn’t dare to speak out loud! I have to admit I used this phrase myself, especially when the talk was about politics or social issues. Never thought of even going deeper in its meaning until I moved out from Belarus to Poland. Fear of the state machine; selective denial of reality; learned helplessness and the resulting social irresponsibility have been ingrained into us with long term propaganda as well as ‘innocent’ language. What a surprise it was to see that it is not like this everywhere. A bit less oppression and you are able to say aloud what you think, to bear responsibility for what is going around you. In those new circumstances when I heard the idioms from other people started to worry me. Is it possible to choose the position of being totally indifferent and out of the problem if you are living in a community, not on a desert island?

I started to investigate whether those language patterns of distancing are unique to some regions or if they are universal. It came out that in many languages around the world we have phraseological units about unwillingness to deal with anything. Some of them are based on historical facts, some on the geographical traditions and values, some are just funny. But all, despite their literal translation, mean one and the same ‘I do not care’. In my work I combine various traditional proverbs referring to avoidance and minding your own business with fictional scenarios. I play with dark humour and visually interpret contemporary ignorance on social and political issues.

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