From the text by Piotr Lisowki (Epidemic, CoCA in Toruń):
The project I Was Always with You has a referential character. The starting point of the story was Józef Robakowski’s Exchange Gallery, which Liliana decided to take over. The idea of appropriation plays the key role here. Exchange Gallery is a place of historical importance for Polish art, a symbolic place, a cult. Robakowski, as an artist, is also known as iconic person, master, classic, teacher, doyen of avantgarde.
There is generation gap between him and Liliana Piskorska, but he remains the symbol of art with which she grew up. The same goes for other artists invited to this project: Alicja Zebrowska with Jacek Lichon, Wiesław Smuzny, Elzbieta Jabłonska. They are all important and had a big influence on the young artist’s creative consciousness. At the same time, we are dealing with the reversal of hierarchy. In 1987 Robakowski performed his series of Fetysze [Fetishes], photographing himself (actually his chest) with important art objects forming part of his collection. Similarly, the young artist in her project fetishises selected artists, who remain to her academic canon in building her own artistic language. In the assumption artists – masters became her fetish, and she enters their space, studios or home. She takes them for a date, cooks in their kitchen, creates joint work. Each photographic cycle has a different atmosphere resulting from the specificity of the meeting / relationship / talk / environment. The very meeting is an integral part of the project. Liliana, while underlining differences, tries to overcome them at the same time; trying to change the relationship of “power”, which prevails between her and her teachers. As a consequence, the whole undertaking takes ironic, parodic, lightweight form, but very sensual and autobiographical. How can you overcome the barrier of hierarchy, the barrier of “power”, the barrier of legend? The only way seems to be taking over the person, the place, the space, which is already a part of the history of art, for oneself and for one’s own artistic activity. Busyness in the atelier and in the private home of artists is an attempt to deal with the tradition by reversing the relationship. Liliana Piskorska takes over and transforms the private space, by means of fetishization of the protagonists she creates her own private collection of artists. And the convention of pastiche seems to be ideal form for presenting power relations between the teacher and the student.