Rafał Zajko’s Drive to Foreverise

This piece appears in the columns section of frieze 251, ‘Afterlife’

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.

In the series ‘Dangerous Liaison’ (2018) and ‘Unison’ (2019), the forms cast in ice would melt throughout the day in a room-temperature gallery. By the end, a small pool of water sat on the floor beneath an empty steel bracket or supporting armature. I was interested in the marks an object or person leaves behind. This idea led directly to works such as Monument 1 (2019), a monolith of grey paving bricks onto which I invited visitors to place their chewing gum. I had seen fragments of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz covered in layers of gum. I thought: is this a gesture against the former Soviet Union, or is it a way for people to acknowledge their presence there?

I became interested in the residue of the body and sought alternatives to clear ice for sculpture, including synthetic urine (Syfon (Green), 2020) – a vivid, incandescent yellow – and sweat (Bobbin III (The Hive), 2023). In another connection to my past, fabric manufacturers use these artificial fluids to test the reaction of materials to prolonged exposure to the body. Ultimately, my sculptures, whether activated by a human performer or not, are not real machines. In this respect, I think of them as camp: there’s something humorous about their attempts to be something they’re not. While I explore serious topics like deindustrialization, queer subjectivity and cycles of labour, I am equally drawn to absurdity.

I often mix religious mythology with science fiction, both of which attempt to contend with our mortality. In the performance Interludium (2020), for instance, I assumed the mischievous character of Chochol from Stanisław Wyspiański’s play The Wedding (1901). Chochol is both a symbol of necrosis – dying skin and winter decay – and of regeneration, a harvest of vegetation to give us life and the strength to function and grow. I donned a costume covered in protruding wheat tillers and sang traditional Polish folk songs in a room containing an orange coffin, inside which lay a ceramic mask of my character (Amber Chamber, 2020). I spent the performance enlivening these objects, blowing vape smoke through a tube into the coffin chamber.

‘The Spin-Off’, my first UK institutional solo show which opened in March at Focal Point Gallery, includes many methodologies and processes from my earlier work, particularly those related to circularity, labour and performance. Amongst other things, it contains egg-like stools on casters (Bucky’s, 2025) inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Domes (1948); a modular platform that houses an elliptical ceramic relief (Funny Games, 2025); cabinets filled with ceramic eggs, bread rolls and pickled clay sculptures, which suggest longevity and cryogenic freezing (Specters, 2025); and a self-performing sculpture (A Star Is Born, 2025).

My new works combine folklore, pop culture and science fiction to explore the late-capitalist drive to ‘foreverise’ – a term coined by US author Grafton Tanner in 2023 to describe a cultural movement that seeks to excavate and endlessly prolong the past. I have also collaborated with a group of people from Contemporary Elders, the gallery’s over-60s programme, who will perform at opening and closing events (Denim, 2025). I envision their choreography as a blend of Samuel Beckett’s play Quad (1981) and synchronized swimming.

As told to Sean Burns

This article first appeared in frieze issue 251 with the headline ‘Foreverise’

Rafał Zajko’s ‘Spin Off’ is on view at Focal Point, Southend-on-Sea, until 7 June

^{Main image: Rafał Zajko, ‘The Spin Off’ (detail), 2025, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; photograph: Corey Bartle-Sanderson}