Living space (Lebenscraum)
Polish-born, Miami-based artist Justyna Kisielewicz confronts the history of colonialism and our collective search for freedom in ‘’living spaces’’, her most ambitious exhibition to date. According to the artist, her works ‘explores polish history within the context of multiple sites of global oppression including the colonial project in the Americas and our current climate crisis.’
Her kaleidoscopic, atemporal canvases encompass disparate historical periods, the lush native vegetation of Florida, a pantheon of animal (each one rich in sumbolism), and the omnipresence of two masked figures decked in luxury fashion. Kisielewicz explains that in the exhibition’s largest painting, Lebensraum, the two oversized figures take her back to her childhood when when she devoured books about discovery and travel like Julius Verne’s ‘Journey to the center of the earth’ or ‘Guillever’s travels.’ These books, all written by men, are about larger-than-life men entering a land populated by little people. Often framed as discovery narratives, these stories perpetuate the age-old colonial dynamic of a ‘civilized’ culture conquering naive or ‘primitive’ people. She describes the colonial project as ‘colonizers stepping onto ‘virgin’ lands where they found natives and turned them to noble savages win the process of civilizing.’
In her art Kisielewicz narrates her search for agency while challenging the dominant discourse about empire and colonial oppression. Her work forces the viewer to stop, look and think critically about our understanding of history, consuption and colonialism. She explores the narrative of ‘the other’ while interrogating the powers that control and write global history.
Forms of colonial violence and displacement are often framed as past historical events, but many scholars see them as a portal into the present and the future. Justina’s atemporal canvases are an example of art as a portal for making sense of the past, present and future. She draws on her own family’s difficult past to drive her critical interpretation of oppressive historical structures based on race, class, violence, empire, etc.
Traditionally history was written from the colonizer’s perspective. Her work is aligned with Postcolonialism which critiques this biased writing of history. Kisielewiczreclaims her power as the narrator of her experience – a common theme in postcolonial art. Her work urges us to question, challenge, and finally reimage both the historic past and our present reality.
Culture critique Homi K. Bhabha call this reclamation the ‘right to narrate’ a concept that refers to the idea that marginalized groups have the authority to tell their own stories and reshape their histories. This reclamation is a fundamental facet of freedom which comes from challenging the dominant discourses by claiming agency over our historical narrative.
Living Space or Lebensraum – the title of both the exhibition and the largest work in the show is a term specific to 1940’s Poland when Hitler ordered his troops to murder men, women, and children. The aim of this act of colonial violence was so for the Nazi regime to obtain the ‘living space’ which they felt entitled to take. For the Germans, it was a territory of Eastern Europe which they needed to gain their living space.
The Nazis borrowed from the 19th century American belief in ‘Manifest Destiny’ which espoused the idea that the U.S. was ‘destined’ to expand its domination and spread democracy and capitalism across the North American continent. This ideology fueled westward expansion and led to the unlawful displacement of indigenous populations, similar to Hitler’s Eastern expansion and annihilation of Poles.
As aforementioned this eastern expansion is called Lebensraum, or Living Space. In relocating to Florida and through her vibrant, color-drenched canvases, the artist has reclaimed her own Living Space. Via the often violent backdrop of global history, this exhibition takes us on an artist’s own journey towards freedom, a beacon of hope in these troubling times.
Veronica Pesantes Vallejo
Miami, 2025
