Operation Hyacinth and Margot Szutowicz

UE: There are two oil paintings in the exhibition, one is “Margot” and one is “Hyacinth.” Can you please tell us about those paintings?

KR: So the Hyacinth painting, it’s referring to the blackboards. It’s imitating the blackboard, but it’s a painting. And the title is coming from the Hyacinth action (Operation Hyacinth), the police action against gay people in Poland in 1985, 86 and 87.

There was several actions that targeted gay people to collect data about them and later to blackmail them. It could be considered a Polish Stonewall, although it was not that violent. But it did influence the way how the movement started to organize after those events.

So you have the stars, it’s like a night, and it’s referring to this story that it is not learned somehow.
And then the Margot portrait, it’s the small painting with the non-binary activist. On the background you can see the non-binary flag. And it’s the first time that – when I focused only on the historical figures that you can see in the Gallery of Portraits – I thought like: who will be painting actually what is happening just now?

So Margot was one of the first brave activists that a few years ago were accused of destroying the homophobic billboards and then brought by the police to the court. And many activists, artists, or just people who wanted to support her, or them rather, she’s using different pronouns. So, they were arrested.

And it became again after Hyacinth another moment in Polish queer history that we witnessed violence and then there was a reaction on that. And that’s how I thought to include them into this Gallery of Portraits, but also on the side as a specific figure.