Polish Pavilion At Venice Biennale Explores Deaf Epistemology

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is currently featuring Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski's installation, Liquid Tongues, which focuses on accessibility as its core concept. Rather than an add-on, access is fundamental to the work's meaning, according to the source.

Curated by Ewa Chomicka and Jolanta Woszczenko, and produced by the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, the installation immerses visitors immediately. The space is filled with an aqueous blue from video projections filmed in a Warsaw swimming pool. Low-frequency acoustic waves, mimicking cetacean vocalizations and echolocation, create a physical sensation, allowing sound to be experienced through the body rather than just the ear.

A central element of the installation is“Chór w Ruchu (Choir in Motion)” (2026), an ensemble of Deaf and hearing performers. They simultaneously narrate the story of biologist Roger Payne, whose 1970 recordings, Songs of the Humpback Whale, played a role in the global whaling ban. The narration is presented in phonic English and International Sign Language. Alicja Czyczel's choreography draws inspiration from fish shoals, with performers moving as a unified, distributed organism without a soloist or conductor. Aleksandra Gryka's score and Magda Mosiewicz's cinematography complete the work, ensuring no single communication channel, whether voice, sign, image, or vibration, takes precedence. All elements function as translations, with no single original.

The conceptual basis for Liquid Tongues is“Deaf Gain” (2010), a term originated by Deaf Studies scholar H-Dirksen L. Bauman. This concept reframes deafness not as a deficiency but as a cultural and perceptual expansion. Kotowski, a Deaf artist known for his investigations into language, biopower, and the suppression of phonetic training, is a pivotal figure in the installation. His involvement prevents the work from becoming“metaphor tourism,” which is the temporary adoption of another group's lived experience as an aesthetic framework. Instead, it places Liquid Tongues within the discourse of artists like Christine Sun Kim and Joseph Grigely, who have significantly integrated Deaf epistemology into contemporary art.

Source: Hyperallergic

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