Is Polish Burqa Possible? Image of Woman in Poland between Politics and Contemporaneous Art

Analysing the current political scenario, it is good to mind the ‘distribution of the sensible’ as phrased by Jacques Ranciere, which refers to a regime and delimitates spaces and times, of the visible and the invisible, of speech and noise; and to think about possible re-distribution, which has emancipating character that can contribute to more democratic politics and aesthetics. In contemporary times of visual culture, it is important to mind especially strong, symbolic images constructed for political stakes and distributed in the public sphere to understand what they do and how, in order to disarm and transform them. Focusing on two faces of backlash observed in contemporary Europe, one anti-Muslim and the other anti-women, we propose the interdisciplinary analysis of two artworks by Polish female  artists: The Polish Burqa by Karolina Mełnicka (2013) and Mokosh by Katarzyna Górewicz (phot. Jacek Gajak, 2017), which imply discourses on women in tradition in different ways that might be considered as dialectic and symbolic in Ranciere’s terms. One is decomposing the politically oppressive use of traditional symbols, and the other is proposing a reference to tradition in an empowering way.