ZA-CZYN! (IGNITE!) « Zuzanna Hertzberg

ZA-CZYN! (IGNITE!)

2021; visual story of a Jewish-Ukrainian woman anarchist, founder of the Anarchist Black Cross; Triptych—silkscreen on textile, two banners — and spoken word performance.

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Za-Czyn! (Ignite!), 2021 – 2023, triptych – silkscreen on textile, two banners – textile installation view and spoken word performance, postcards benefit for ABC. Photo documentation of the solo exhibition Women Fighters. An Affective Archive, Studio Gallery, 2023, Warsaw, Poland. Photo: M. Tym

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Za-Czyn! (Ignite!), 2021 – 2023, triptych – silkscreen on textile, two banners – textile installation view and spoken word performance, postcards benefit for ABC. Arsenał Gallery, 2021, Białystok, Poland. Photo: M. Tym

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Za-Czyn! (Ignite!), 2021, postcards benefit for ABC. Arsenał Gallery, 2021, Białystok, Poland. Photo: K. Gorysz

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Za-Czyn! (Ignite!), 2021 – 2023, legend to the visual story of a Jewish-Ukrainian woman anarchist, founder of the Anarchist Black Cross; triptych—silkscreen on textile, two banners.

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Za-Czyn! (Ignite!), 2021 visual story of a Jewish-Ukrainian woman anarchist, founder of the Anarchist Black Cross. Triptych – obverse of the central part, silkscreen on textile; obverses of two side banners, silkscreen on textile

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Za-Czyn! (Ignite!), 2021 visual story of a Jewish-Ukrainian woman anarchist, founder of the Anarchist Black Cross. Triptych – reverse of the central part, silkscreen on textile; reverses of two side banners, silkscreen on textile

Zuzanna Hertzberg, banner created for the Parade Parade in 2021 at the time when LGBTQAP+ people in Hungary were losing their rights, silkscreen on textile, Yiddish and Polish inscriptions on the banner: Sisterhood – You will never walk alone – Care – Deeds. Photos: Radical Focus, Mikołaj Tym

The artwork, composed as a triptych, records a fragment of the history, iconography and idea of anarchism, stretched across a timeline.

The installation is tied together by the visual story of a Jewish Ukrainian woman, Olga Taratuta (the founder of the Anarchist Black Cross that still exists today), with whom I enter into a dialogue, enriching her story with a personal commentary. I refer to contemporary practices of rebellion and solidarity by conveying the message of anarcho-feminism, symbolized by a scarlet shekhinah on one of two banners. The internationalist overtone of the work is emphasized by the use of the alphabet and calligraphy of several languages (Yiddish, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian), illustrating the diversity of the anarchist tradition. The form and content of the banners link the past with the present fight for the rights of women, minorities, and refugees.

I use the medium, which is traditionally attributed to women, namely textile, to record the herstory of activism on material printed with archival photographs and eyewitness accounts. I treat this work as part of the new affective archive that I am constructing. Its contemporary milieu is a public space accessible to all. It is an action directed towards the passing on herstories and recovering memory.

It is also a story in which I juxtapose the archival documents with the contemporary, everyday anarchist practices, including the ones in which I participate. One of the wing-banners was created as an act of solidarity with people protesting in Belarus (also referring to that country’s first multilingual banner) and the other for the Pride Parade, at a time when LGBTQAP+ people in Hungary were losing their rights.

The documents and the banners show anarchism as an initiatory situation, a spark/ starter—transnational, internationalist, non-hierarchical, igniting and reviving in different places and historical moments. It is a struggle for radically perceived social justice wherever the mechanism of cultural and political oppression comes to the fore. The title of the work highlights the nomadic nature of the embers of revolution, which migrate and grow like rhizomes because every bit of freedom taken away once and elsewhere is a loss of freedom here and now.