Tomasz Matuszak / Polonia
video, digital prints, 2024
This is an ongoing project that is still developing and had its first public unveiling in Lisbon
‘PARTI-cipation X - Ocupar a Cidade’, Prato Riverside, Lisbon, Portugal
‘Life on Mars - Siana Camp’ is a project juxtaposing the horrific history of the Ustasha concentration camp with the current approach to the idea of global tourism, which has been used in a skillful way to “mask” by pushing uncomfortable facts of the past out of the public’s consciousness. In 1941, a concentration camp was built on the island of Pag in Croatia. The Slana concentration camp was an extermination camp, part of the Ustasha concentration camp and death pit system. The majority of prisoners were Serbs, Jews and Croatian communists.
Recently, tourist trails have been created recently, strongly promoted through digital media. ‘Life on Mars Trail’, as the trail is called, consists of several-kilometer-long paths and concrete routes that run in the immediate vicinity of or through the area of the former concentration camp. In order to make the stay more attractive for tourists, a via ferrata was even built on the rocky beach of Slana (at the site of the camp). The beaches in Metajna and Slana are very popular with tourists, and in the nearby bars, tourists enjoy the charms of the sea to the sound of music, unaware that this is taking place at the site of execution.
The Slana camp operated for three months until August 1941. Historians estimate that the number of deaths in the camp ranged from 8,000 to 12,000. In the first weeks, prisoners died mainly from physical violence, exhaustion, heat, hunger and thirst. As the transports became more frequent and the camp began to run out of space, the Ustasha began to carry out mass executions of prisoners. In August, the Ustasha were forced by Mussolini to abandon and liquidate all concentration camps in the area. Before the liquidation of the camp on the island of Pag, the Ustasha carried out a mass shooting above the Slana camp. A total of ten mass graves were found on the nearby hills. Already in September 1941, the Italian military sanitary and disinfection commission discovered two shallow mass graves. The exhumations were carried out for epidemiological reasons, as the residents of Metajna complained about the terrible stench coming from the vicinity of the camp. They found 791 dead and burned bodies of camp prisoners, as well as an innumerable number of body parts, among whom were 293 women and 91 children aged 5 to 15. Thousends of other bodies were never found.
More:
http://www.tomaszmatuszak.art.pl/lifeonmars-slanacamp/page-2/
YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkWxR6_8b0U
about the artist
Tomasz Matuszak's creative experiments run on many levels, i.e. installation, sculpture, public intervention, photography, video. His multimedia works very often refer to specific architectural spaces that condition the specificity of a place. When using photography in his artistic statements, Matuszak, among other things, refers to conceptual tautologies, repetitions, which have their ideological roots in, for example, the work of conceptualists. In some sense, they elaborate on what has been hidden, ‘manipulated’ or, on the contrary, what is obvious in its unreality. Ambiguity acquires special qualities his projects. Many of his works are created on the basis of the found space of a gallery or other public place. Adding a ‘commentary’ to a particular place, the works integrate with it to create a new or different sense of a familiar space. Many of the works are site-specific, which seek to stimulate a space (internal or external) or a social or political situation, making it a key element of the viewer's experience. From 1987 to 93 he studied at the graphic design department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. He works in sculpture, spatial actions, photography and intervention in public space. Many of his works are created on the basis of an existing gallery space or other public space. By adding a ‘commentary’ to a particular place, the works integrate with it to create a new or different sense of a familiar space. He has participated in over 150 group and solo exhibitions at home and abroad. He is the head of Interactive and Site-Specific Studies at the Institute of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz, Poland.
More: www.tomaszmatuszak.art.pl
