The Prophets’ Parade

As its name indicates, the group was formed in the important industrial town of Łódz in 1979. The Neo-avant-garde art group uses photo media and a conceptual understanding of tradition in its approach to the genres of photography, experimental film, and performance as a pictorial unit. They were radical critics of socialist Poland of the 1980s, and they owe their international fame to this.

This cycle of works by the group Łódz Kaliska entitled The Prophets’ Parade is, as always with these artists, an ironic and irreverent statement about collective myth-making with which Poles have been feeding successive generations for decades. Starting with compulsory reading material at school, myth-making constantly refers to the Romantic tradition, the archaic notions of which are grotesque when juxtaposed with the contemporary world.

When they show a female charging with a lance or transform Balladyna – the sombre character of Slowacki’s drama of the same title – into a figure who loves taking selfies, the artists of Łódź Kaliska depict the symbols of Polish national megalomania and, with a perverse distance, expose the abusive manipulation of martyrological stereotypes.

The project The Prophets’ Parade consists of the following works: Stefan and Mayonnaise, Mickiewicz, Balladyna Selfie, Janina Kochanowska and The Standing Charge.