“Random Uncertainty” 2020 Cast Silicone Rubber
MARTINE KACZYNSKI SCULPTOR | EDUCATOR Interview by Harryet Candee Harryet Candee: Can you please describe for us the life you had in the UK and how it may have left an indelible mark on who you are as an artist, educator and person? Martine Kaczynski: I grew up in London but my father was a German refugee who escaped the Nazi Regime along with his mother, brother, and his father who survived Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp 20 miles from their home in Berlin. The Holocaust survivors that entered England formed my community and I am a product of that environment, with its haunting history. Only recently has science caught up with what most of my friends knew at an early age - that our families’ trauma was imbedded in us. It’s left an indelible mark on who I am and how I see the world. My work circles around issues of safety, protection, and function. I re-contextualize objects 10 • OCTOBER 2021 THE ARTFUL MIND
Photography Courtesy of the Artist
initiating a deeper understanding of them, within the means and markers of settlement. I find myself examining our environment and interpreting elements of its ordered landscape. I’m drawn to civic architecture which navigates us through our daily lives, and the structures we pass by but forget to notice. They are on the side of the road or in between places; Storage units, gas stations, broken railings, washed out signs. Discarded. Abandoned. Invisible. At first glance the work is reassuring in its representation but deprived of its expected function or context it falls into a sense of uncertainty and doubt - quietly unhinging the stability of what we see. What prevails is a sense of dislocation, and the psychological complexities of our everyday experience. I don’t believe my work would have this focus without my history. Working in New York as a professor was a real
treat. My students came from all over the world, the classroom was an education that went beyond any written syllabus. I think I capitalized on this by bending assignments to naturally celebrate their differences. Having a difficult history and coming from another country helped students feel ok with their own experiences. My job was to encourage them to utilize that as material for their work. Martine, is there a connection to your childhood experiences and the art that you create now? My father loved art and we often went to museums and galleries and travelled great distances to see magical things. I saw the Pyramids at 14 and by 16 I was traveling regularly with friends around Europe and the Middle East. At 20 I was in China standing at the edge of an excavation dig
