Daniel Rycharski: Rural, Queer, and Catholic
Artist and activist Daniel Rycharski is working in the intersection of rural, queer, and Christian life in Poland.
Cover photo: Strachy (Fears), by Daniel Rycharski, Kurówko, Poland (2018). Photo by Daniel Chrobak and courtesy of Vogue Polska.
This article is part of my 30 Living Queer Artists Worth Celebrating in 2019 series. June is Pride Month, commemorating the international gay rights movement that began June 28th, 1969, with the Stonewall riots of New York. 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the event. I’m celebrating all month long!
WARNING: The following article features and/or discusses demonization and sexual abuse.
Daniel Rycharski, carrying one of his crosses of “Fears” (circa 2019). Photo by Mateusz Skwarczek for Agencja Gazeta. Courtesy of Wyborcza.
Outsider artist Daniel Rycharski, 33, is defiantly challenging homophobia and stereotypes in Poland. Rycharski — who is both Catholic and gay — studied art in the metropolitan city of Krakow and he has returned to his hometown, the rural village of Kurówko, where he is creating daring art that focuses on identity and community within the socially conservative nation.
The situation is growing dire. The ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party is casting the gay community as an enemy of Poland in a plan to mobilize voters. PiS co-founder and party leader Jarosław Kaczyński has declared, that gay rights pose “a real threat to our identity, to our nation.”
Poland is politically divided between liberal urban centers and the conservative countryside. PiS rules Poland due to its dominance in the rural areas, attributed to the party’s combination of welfare and xenophobic nationalism.
Despite all this, Rycharski isn’t interested in demonizing his neighbors in Kurówko. “Everyone thinks people in the village are stupid, dirty, angry and they have no culture,” Rycharski explains, noting this isn’t true. “If I can change Kurówko, Poland can change.”
Strachy (Fears), by Daniel Rycharski, Kurówko, Poland (2018). Photo by Daniel Chrobak and courtesy of Vogue Polska.
Indeed, Rycharski is challenging perceptions with his latest exhibition: the critically acclaimed Strachy, which translates to “Fears” in Polish. Rycharski has created a forest of scarecrow inspired crosses, draped in clothing and barbed wire.
The clothes were sent to Rycharski by queer Poles all over the country. The donated items are pulled on the crosses, sewn and bound by barbed wire “as if these clothes were subjected to torture,” recalling the death of Jesus Christ. Rycharski represents queer anxiety this way “because this archetypal, traditional fear is just a cross, a rag, a hat, a pot on the head.”
Strachy is a direct confrontation of the Roman Catholic Church, which is facing an ongoing international scandal of sexual abuse, while preaching against LGBT acceptance. “I have deluded myself into thinking the Church would accept us,” Rycharski laments. He now advocates “non-religious Christianity,” a departure from institution in favor of private faith.
The crosses are a powerful statement about homophobia and discrimination. The PiS party is using the queer community as scarecrows for rural voters while the gay community is afraid of the hypocritical Catholic Church and conservative Christians. Rycharski suggests everyone’s fears are more imagined than real.
Hopefully Daniel Rycharski’s art will change Poland — and the idea of Polish identity — for the better, but the battle will be hard-fought. Keep up to date with Rycharski via Instagram.
