Hanna Borzymowska
The sculpture gets its rounded shape from the twisting, weaving, and looping, but its column form comes from inquiry into material connections and contrasts. Accumulating knowledge of the properties of ordinary things like paper, plastic, metal, cotton, or plants, allows for negotiation between their abilities and limits, and my aims. Their vertical placement supports thinking through the associations they have with each other, their impacts on one another, and the remnants they leave, comparable to stratification levels in geology. However, different meanings can be drawn as to their connections, as the materials are in both contrast and conversation with each other, differing in aesthetic and practical properties. The column grows tall as materials compile and continue, each influencing the next one. The inefficient bygone techniques become counterintuitive to the grand sculpture — an unlikely, absurd combination.
In my practice I collaborate with materials in a constant negotiation between my aims and their more-than-human agency. Material limitations are visible throughout the sculpture, from the cut off ends of willow branches, to the bend in the looped metal section. I aim to also consider the lives of materials I work with before I got them. In the way which I’m accumulating understanding, and the sculpture is accumulating height, I think of the materials as collecting within them the experiences which can transform them from flimsy paper to a strong rope.