DRIVE-THRU
DRIVE THRU (2022) installation at Galeria Miejska Arsenał in Poznań, PL
“In the exhibition entitled Drive-thru [...] Nadia Markiewicz focuses on the potential inherent in non-normative bodies, as well as their emancipatory and transformative capabilities. The main theme of the show is the real-life story of a couple with disabilities who decided to get married in the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas. They experienced considerable difficulties while getting out of their car before the ceremony. The owner of the chapel noticed this and was inspired to create a chapel where people could get married without stepping out of the car. This brief, ordinary event links the themes that interest Markiewicz: the changes occurring in the world, the emergence of pop-cultural spaces, an autobiographical element – the wedding of her own parents, the spirit of being on the road, the theme of celebrity.
Drive-thru the little white chapel, where the body meets the materiality of the surrounding world. Markiewicz builds upon the concept of the misfit used by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and introduces the figure of a rebel to her narrative. “Not fitting in” turns into a force triggering transformation.” Ewelina Muraszkiewicz
Nadia Markiewicz: “[...] the essay Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, in which she describes the phenomenon of disability as neither an individual medical program requiring a solution nor entirely a social construct. She defines disability as a dynamic relation between the flesh and the world in which they sometimes do not fit together because of their respective material properties. Since I was already fantasizing about the topic of love in relation to disability, I then thought of disability as a failed romantic relationship with the world. In the installation, an awkwardly enlarged, wooden cupid’s arrow diagonally cuts through the space and rests its head in the directions of the next room, as if it has missed its target hovering above – a fragile stained glass dartboard.
Of course, in the story of the Drive-thru, the world adjusts and we witness an instance where the two pieces finally match, but not because a body becomes less disabled through, for example, elaborate prosthetics, but because the environment is transformed. And the transformation ends up serving everyone – as does a keyboard, much like the one on which I am writing this answer, which was originally developed for a person who was blind.”
curator Ewelina Muraszkiewicz
photos by Michał Adamski
video DOP Bartosz Zalewski
special effects Alek Sarna