ISLANDERS from Poland are being invited to take part in an artistic project that will tickle the community’s taste buds in 2022.
Natalia Kalicki, who is based in Germany but will spend five weeks in the Island from mid-January, is inviting Poles to send her their recipes and what she describes as ‘personal narratives’ related to those recipes for inclusion in an unusual cookery book.
‘The project is about bringing in the multiple perspectives of the participants,’ Ms Kalicki said. ‘I am asking for recipes but also for details of how those people relate either to the Island and their immediate community, or to the recipes themselves – for instance, stories about the recipes and where they got them.’
These personal contributions can take any form. Most obviously they are likely to be written comments but Ms Kalicki said that they could take other forms such as illustrations and she is also inviting participants to include a photograph of their homes in Jersey or in Poland which she would then turn into an illustration. There is a lot of different ways that people can be involved in the project,’ she added.
Ms Kalicki, who was raised in Warsaw and on the west coast of Canada, has degrees from Concordia University and the University of Leipzig, and has participated in a number of artistic residencies in Iceland, Germany and in China. Her work has taken a variety of different forms from paintings and text work to installations and assemblages of different items. ‘For me, the medium comes after the concept – some ideas involve painting but I’m not married to a particular medium,’ she said.
The Jersey project responds to a call made by ArtHouse Jersey for three artists to visit the Island to create a piece of work that will celebrate the contribution made to Island life by some of the communities of different nationals now based in the Island. Joining Ms Kalicki are Portuguese artist Cliff Andrade and Dana Olarescu from Romania in a venture that has the support of the Polish Cultural Institute, the Portuguese Embassy and the Romanian Cultural Institute.
Although the projects are being developed separately, all three artists are already in discussion about devising an event that would bring together the participants from the three communities at the conclusion of their collaboration at the end of February.
Describing herself as a facilitator in the cookbook project, Ms Kalicki said that the concept was intended to explore the backgrounds and motivations of the individuals who form the ex-patriot Polish community in Jersey.
All those who take part in the project will receive a copy of the book which is likely also to be available for general purchase.
Ms Kalicki has already used social media channels to try to reach individual members of the Polish community but said that she welcomed the opportunity to widen the scope by issuing a general invitation for all to participate.
Anyone from the Polish community who would like to take part can contact the artist by email at: natmsk@hotmail.com by the end of January.
All are invited to collaborate or, as Ms Kalicki puts it herself: ‘Zapraszam wszystkich zainteresowanych do współpracy’.
