Polityka mięsności. O "Piramidzie zwierząt" Katarzyny Kozyry

The Politics of Meat. On Katarzyna Kozyra’s Pyramid of Animals

In July 2024, artist Elwira Sztetner and researcher Katarzyna Lewandowska conducted an artistic action at Zachęta Art Gallery regarding Katarzyna Kozyra’s Pyramid of Animals, demanding burial of the animal remains. Their petition referenced decolonial practices and criticism of ‘speciesism.’ Pyramid was Kozyra's 1993 thesis work, becoming one of the most important pieces in Polish 1990s art. By using dead animals instead of sculpting their forms she caused one of the biggest scandals in Polish art after 1989. This text by returning to the moment when the sculpture was created and the atmosphere of the 1990s seeks to show that violence inscribed in Kozyra’s act was present in the experience of the transition especially for women. The intimate relation between meat and feminine embodiment built by Kozyra in the Pyramid and in another work – Olimpia, is understood in the categories of non-representation and work of affect that makes this history contiguous with the present moment.