A few months before Poland accedes to the European Union, a Polish artist is sentenced to six months curtailment of liberty and to social work for twenty hours a month. The sentence is justified by saying she had offended the religious feelings of the plaintiffs. Dorota Nieznalska caused indignation on the part of the representatives of the LPR (Liga Polskich Rodzin)1 with her work »Pasja« (Passion), because it includes a photographic depiction of male genitalia on a Greek cross. This object is part of an installation that the plaintiffs have never seen and which was not presented to the court as evidence. No experts were called in to the hearing, something that might have helped defuse the situation. Nonetheless, Dorota Nieznalska was sentenced according to Art. 196 of the Polish Criminal Code, which allows for up to two years’ imprisonment for »offences against religious sentiment«.

This event received scant comment in the Western European press. In Poland, however, it triggered a discussion that made public long repressed and socially divisive conflicts. How was such a court decision possible? The Nieznalska affair and the issue of artistic freedom has once more made the overweening influence of the Catholic Church on Polish cultural and social politics the subject of debate.

It almost looks as though Dorota Nieznalska is being pushed involuntarily into the role of martyr in this debate about the freedom of art, culture and public discourse as opposed to Catholic-backed populist tendencies in politics. But the »fame« thus achieved is by no means a guarantee for an unstoppable artistic career, as one might be tempted to think. Because of the sentence, which has now gone into appeal, she is not permitted to leave her home town, Gda_sk. The exhibition of her recent works near Gda_sk planned for November 2003 was prohibited at the instigation of a local politician. The increased popularity she gained because of the trial was used by the court to justify a heavier sentence.

Nieznalska is not the first artist since 1989 to be criticised and defamed by the media for her provocative works. Many internationally known artists such as Katazyna Kozyra, Andrezej Zmijewski or the filmmaker Marcin Koszalka have had to accept very severe criticism, whose rhetoric - as Izabela Kowalczyk argues in her lecture »Retoryka nienawisci«2 - sometimes brings to mind the fascist condemnation of »degenerate art«, But Nieznalska’s conviction is the only one to unleash a wave of protest. Many artists, art critics and representatives from all branches of knowledge have spoken out resolutely against the rightist, conservative mainstream.
This situation has been brought about primarily by the all-powerful Catholic Church, which has received numerous privileges since 1989: financial concessions, the return of property to the church (but not to private individuals), the introduction of religious instruction at schools and kindergartens and, last but not least, changes in the law that favour the church. The most important of these is the above-mentioned Art. 196 of the Criminal Code. As Jolanta Brach-Czaina3 notes, this article clearly discriminates against all those who are not of the Catholic faith or do not represent it accordingly. The threat it implies - that you can be taken to court by fanatics at any time - at the very least restricts the right to free speech.

In Lukasz Guzek’s4 article on the video artist and writer Malga Kubiak, he notes that Poland never had two of the traditions that were fundamental to the transformation in the cultures of Western Europe and North America after the Second World War: psychoanalysis and the underground. This gap in the country’s recent cultural history is what makes it possible for art works to be measured still according to the canon of the aesthetic and moral values of the church.

At times, it looks as if Poland is leaping directly into the »post« era without having taken part in the developments that helped bring this era about. In the catalogue for the exhibition »Bialy Mazur«5, in which recent works of Polish women artists were shown (including a new work by Dorota Nieznalska), Iza Kowalczyk comments that there is not much sense in calling this Polish art of the late nineties »post-feminist«, because it has evolved from a separate context. So far, no one has worked out any special terminology to describe the cultural production of a country that is in a period of transition. This also clearly shows the pressure to conform exerted by the Western art industry. Understandably enough, only a few artists manage the balancing act of satisfying both the demands of reactionary guardians of the artistic discourse and those of a profit-driven art market in Western Europe.
Those who condemn Nieznalska’s conviction are afraid that such cases could increase in number and that the freedom of artists could be further restricted. However, with Poland on its way to becoming a fully-fledged member of the EU, a development like this does not seem very likely. Or could the enshrinement of “Christian values” in the European Constitution, as is being demanded by many, actually favour cultural politics like these? As Jolanta Brach-Czaina says, the values underlying European culture have grown far more on the foundations of ancient Greece than on those of Christianity.6 The special mention given to Christian values in the preamble to the EU Constitution is at the very least superfluous, if not historically false.

In his commentary on the court decision, Lukasz Guzek7 makes it clear that political interests aiming to fan the emotions of the “simple folk are behind the manipulative way Dorota Nieznalska’s art has been presented to the public. After all, populism is nothing new in Europe, and Polish artists take a sober overall view of their situation: restrictions on individuals’ freedom of opinion and liberty to travel, imposed in response to the terrorist attacks since 9/11, have now become the norm in the Western world. As one ironic commentary has it, this is one norm Poland won’t have much difficulty in conforming to.

 

 

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