Despite this thick network of intertwined aspects of identity and their conditions, the exhibition is quite transparent, both in terms of the works on display and the content conveyed. It is thanks to these works that the objective of the exhibition becomes crystal clear: to demonstrate the network of new relations and co-dependencies that arise between the works to furnish a vast array of different significations.

As many as two floors of the show were dedicated to a series presented in Poland for the first time so extensively; these are works by Zhang Huan (b. 1965), one of the major representatives of contemporary Chinese art. Zhang Huan is the youngest exponent of a new wave of artists that emerged from China in the early 1990s. His works give a frank account of both the personal and collective experience of history and the process of China’s political and cultural transformation. The artist is famous especially for his traumatic performances that provide uncompromising commentary to e.g. China’s social policy (the so-called one-child policy in a 1994 performance).

In his art, Zhang Huan makes use of a whole gamut of media, ranging from performance through photography to installation, sculpture and painting with ash. The show in Art Stations will present two suites of photographs, “Shanghai Family Tree”, 2001 and “Foam”, 1998. As to their underlying message, both series attempt to take a middle position between the impact of society and family ties and the role of fate in identity formation and the development of a particular place for the artist as an autonomous being in family and social life. Thus, identity and a widely-construed spirituality is the principal motif of both series. Equally intriguing is the iconography of the pictures, as in the “Shanghai Family Tree”, where calligraphed texts are superimposed on the artist’s and the accompanying persons’ faces, and in the case of the “Foam” series, 1998, in which family pictures acquire a specific symbolism in the artist’s mouth.

Iconographic evocativeness and multiple meanings can be also found in the works by Zofia Kulik, who is presenting here her “Self-Magnificence V” (Mother, Daughter, Partner), 2007. In the context of thinking about identity, the tripartite subtitle is an important introduction into the inner realm of the work. Extensive archives of gathered, defined and arranged objects and gestures are the initial form of the work. Both the air of the works and their choice are characteristic of Zofia Kulik. Through a very precise self-definition, the artist strives to partake in existence as much as possible, to be a fragment of “the portrayed wholeness of existence”, of which she herself feels part and parcel.

It is the dormant force discovered in the ability of self-determination, a medium also found in portraits by Maciej Osika or a work in the “Madonnas” series by Katarzyna Górna that points to a parallel dimension of identity contained within the sexual. In Osika, this is a record of the artist’s extraordinary ability to become a woman and the mastery of showing himself as an “androgynous being”, balancing off the related female and male elements within his own psychosomatic self. Another equally bold revalu- ation is attempted by Katarzyna Górna, who struggling with women’s gender roles, also fights for the renewal of the visual tradition, assigning a new dimension to historical iconography. Here the entire body of a woman is a source of deliverance despite layers of historical connotations that put its freedom into question.

Identity seen through the prism of a pursuit of the human condition is taken up by Konrad Kuzyszyn. The artist focuses on the human body, subject to natural and human experimentation. This is a body subject to an irreversible transgression, shown as symbolic of the limits of being, suspended between truth and fiction in a mute question about one’s own identity.

This very question, if in another context, subtly referring to the psychology of facial expressions, is wrestled with by the unreal figures created in Loretta Lux’s photographs. Changes in facial proportions introduce an unknown and unsettling element in human physiognomy. Yet another, comprehensive scope or departure from reality is visible in the work by Thomas Hirschhorn. Here, the impact of the environment and the formula of its representation refer directly to the development of reality as a major component of identity. The artist evocatively portrays features of contemporary information and commercial landscape, compiling selected fragments of it in order to show the dominant characteristics of the present all around us.

The wide range of contemporary phenomena in Thomas Hirschhorn’s works offered a unique network of interrelations, and the manner in which they are communicated is both a sign of the times and an indicator of the artist’s background and ideological and artistic perspective. Within this complex perspective the show in Art Stations also presents works by Michael Najjar. The artist’s interests in the group on display are important in that they focus on state-of-the-art computer technologies. Najjar is intrigued by the vision of a telepathic society similar to a cordless generation of digital machinery. Thanks to advancements in this area, the artist is able to create a portrait supplemented by the permanent, previously invisible element of the brainwaves of a particular person. The iconography is extended by an additional aspect, that of identity manifestation.

As can be observed, the show was a jig-saw puzzle, a set of individual voices. As to its iconography, it presents an interesting challenge for the viewer and participant. This is because the works on display and their seemingly familiar elements make up here a completely new layer of significance.