Info

My action is aimed at replacing the Polish word for the stigmatizing refugee with nowak (or newman, newcomer). Taking advantage of the media hype (including the participation in the Polish@Polish dictionary TV show, numerous radio broadcasts and interviews in the press and on the internet), I have attempted to disseminate this so far non-existent in the everyday language noun, which is at the same time a homonym of the most popular surname in Poland. Inviting known persons from beyond the art world, I want to make newman en vogue. I also collect declarations of its users as a proof to the PWN dictionary. The word archive is available on the nowacy Facebook profile.

Jana Shostak (PL / BY), born in 1993 in Grodno, Belarus. PhD student at the University of Arts in Poznań. On Jun 20, 2017, on the World Newman Day, she defended her master thesis in the Mirosław Bałka Studio of Spatial Activities. The defence took place in the Złote Tarasy shopping mall on 67 TV sets located in the Saturn store. In her artistic practice, she focuses on activating/hacking the community within the non-artistic system. She believes in the effectiveness of art. Winner of the Critics Award at the Best Diploma exhibition or the Grand Prix at the Young Wolves ‘16 festival. In 2015, she established one of the Polish Guinness Records. She holds the official volunteer certificate of World Youth Day 2016. She has participated in numerous exhibitions, among others, at the Goodbye Ai Weiwei (Ini Project, Prague, 2018), Attention! Border (the Labyrinth Gallery in Lublin and the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok; 2017) and Form resistance: Non-exhibition within the Forum for the Future of Culture (the Powszechny Theatre, Warsaw, 2017), and festivals, i.e. Manifesta 11 (Zurich, 2016) and WRO Biennale (Wrocław, 2017).