Foreverise

Afterlife: The past lives on in Rafal Zajko’s dynamic, campy sculptures as fold to Sean Burns

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MY GRANDPARENTS WORKED in a fabric factory in Białystok, Poland. I would spend hours there after school, observing the workers perform repetitive actions on the vast industrial looms. I observed a sense of togetherness among the staff, both with each other and with the equipment - almost as if they were one entity moving in unison.

These memories from childhood influence my sculptural work, which often contains motifs of buttons or control panels. I'm drawn to the haptic experience of activating this powerful apparatus - shifting levers, industrial mechanisms, etc. My objects can often be moved around or rearranged almost procedurally. I incorporate flexible and changeable elements - ceramic props, disintegrating materials - that suggest consequences and invite physical interaction.

I spent my 20s making performances, such as 21 Minutes (2016), which incorporated uniforms, repetitive labour and elaborate choreography. Later, I started producing objects that didn't directly involve performers, but I always felt the performance element was missing. In 2018, I introduced ice into my physical work, creating wall-mounted tablets with an in-built temporality that would change in state and 'perform' during their short lifetimes.