• Anna Passakas and Radoslaw Kudlinski immigrated to Toronto, Ontario from Poland in 1992

Blue Republic is an art collective founded by four Polish artists in 1990. Anna Passakas and Radoslaw Kudlinski immigrated to Toronto from Poland in 1992 and continue to collaborate periodically with Iwona Kaminska-Urban and Michal Urban who are based in Krakow, Poland. There have been occasions when one of the members might create art independently, all the while retaining the name of Blue Republic. Producing art between Canada and Europe, this transnational collective refers to itself as a republic, strategically alluding to the erosion of boundaries which circumscribe political states. With the collapse of the Eastern Bloc (1989), Blue Republic began questioning the viability of the republic and the possibility of reconfiguring power structures with the deconstruction of statehood. An expression of duality, Blue Republic’s art work is informed by the ideological and political disintegration of communism and its members’ experiences in North America. By assembling installations from ramps and other industrial material which are juxtaposed with everyday objects such as motors and gym mats, Blue Republic invites the viewer to reassess and redefine the histories and narratives that we associate with the commonplace. The large ramp-like structures which date from 1996, signify a kind of symbolic wreckage, the skeletal remains of the collapsed communist economic system. Blue Republic (1996) consists of a large wooden frame wrapped in an orange plastic tarpaulin suggestive of a protective veneer and appears to be urging viewers to reorient themselves by looking beyond the metaphoric facade (the tarpaulin) in order to find the meanings which lie beneath the surface.

New Art from Poland, Hungary and Austria
The Art Fort, Krakow, Poland

Ideas Outside Ideology
Centre for Contemporary Art, Wroclaw, Poland

Die Andere Zeit
Ludwig Museum of International Art, Aachen, Germany