Salt, Steam, Skin – Notes from Below I opening ceremony and performance at MODEM
2025. Dec. 04. 18:00
MODEM presents the first Hungarian solo exhibition by Polish artist Alicja Wysocka. Salt, Steam, Skin – Notes from Below is an interdisciplinary installation that connects two distant yet similarly “underground” histories: the coal-mining past of Upper Silesia and the geothermal energy of Debrecen. Wysocka is interested in how this subterranean energy – coal or heat – becomes an everyday bodily experience in both places.
In Silesia, the human body has been shaped for centuries by mining labour: coal dust, the repeated motions of descending underground, physical strain, and the traces of exhaustion. This dangerous work is closely intertwined with Catholic ritual devotion, especially the communal ceremonies held on Barbórka, the Feast of Saint Barbara, patron of miners. In Silesia, the gestures of work and prayer, discipline and protection are inseparable. Across the Great Hungarian Plain – including the Debrecen region- underground water reserves and geothermal potential are substantial, and are used for bathing and healing, agriculture, heating, and industry. Above ground, Debrecen’s history has been shaped by its cívis civic tradition and Reformed ethos: the discipline of work, moderation, communal responsibility, and a puritan religious practice.
At the heart of the exhibition is a performance presented at the opening, created by Wysocka in collaboration with dancers from Gradient Contemporary Ballet Debrecen (Csokonai National Theatre). The dancers work with slow, repetitive, hand-based gestures. These movements simultaneously evoke the bodily memory of mining labour, the discipline of religious ritual, and forms of attentive, mutual care. Warming hands, a slow touch on a shoulder, or a hand massage transform work-gestures into attention and connection. The movement vocabulary of the performance continues within the exhibition: graphite drawings and collages accumulate on the walls, the videos preserve the gestures, and the dancers’ workwear and black handprints remain in the space as traces.
Salt, Steam, Skin – Notes from Below asks how the body carries the histories of work and faith, and how gestures once tied to survival can be relearned as care and collective restoration. In this way, the coal-dust depths of Silesia and the geothermal warmth of Debrecen become a shared experience: two underground energies meeting in the body.
Curator: Krisztián Gábor Török
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Program:
18:00–18:30 – Conversation about the project with Alicja Wysocka and curator Krisztián Gábor Török (in English)
18:45–19:15 – Performance by Alicja Wysocka, with the participation of dancers from Gradient Contemporary Ballet Debrecen (Csokonai National Theatre)
The residency preceding the exhibition is realized with the support of the Municipality of the City of Debrecen and the Skamander program, funded by the Wacław Felczak Foundation, which promotes Hungarian–Polish cultural cooperation.
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The event is free of charge for everyone.
We reserve the right to make changes to the program. By attending, visitors acknowledge and accept that audio and video recordings may be made during the event, and that these may be used for promotional purposes on MODEM’s platforms.