An official from Poland’s national-conservative ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has effectively dismissed the director of a leading theatre in Warsaw, saying that she had used the position to promote LGBT rights and “radical feminism”, including by installing a sculpture of a golden vagina.
The decision to declare Monika Strzępka’s appointment as director of the city’s Dramatic Theatre invalid was made by Konstanty Radziwiłł, governor of the province in which Warsaw is located. Provincial governors are appointed by the government and Radziwiłł is a PiS politician.
In his justification, Radziwiłł wrote that Strzępka was undertaking a “complete departure from the tradition of this cultural institution” by “promoting a repertoire with one ideological line”.
This included Strzępka saying that “the theatre would become ‘a place for minorities, for non-normative identities, for the queer'”, wrote the governor, quoted by TVN24. “The event inaugurating her term was a demonstrative presentation of her radical feminism by placing a ‘golden vagina’ sculpture in the foyer.”
The golden vagina in question (pictured above) is a work of art called “Wet Woman” by self-proclaimed “vagina artist” Iwona Demko. It was installed on 31 August to mark Strzępka’s arrival as director of the theatre, which is located in Warsaw’s famous communist-era Palace of Culture and Science.
“I wanted women to love this part of the body and start thinking positively about it,” said Demko about the artwork, reported local news outlet Nasze Miasto.
However, Radziwiłł argues that the sculpture, in fact, “demeans women” by “reducing feminity to a purely biological aspect that boils down to satisfying sexual needs”. The “porn industry distorts the perception of women in a similar way”, he added.
His justification also noted Strzępka’s praise for actor Maria Peszek as a “voice in the fight for women’s rights and the LGBT+ community”, her positive remarks about women’s protests against a near-total abortion ban, and her alleged promotion of a “pedagogy of shame” that “accuses Poles of numerous crimes”.
As a result, Radziwiłł argued that Strzępka had “not taken into account the expectations of the organiser [of the hiring process], the city of Warsaw, as defined in the contest documents”. That therefore justified the governor’s decision to annul her appointment.
However, his decision was condemned by the deputy mayor of Warsaw, whose municipal authorities are under the control of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s largest opposition party.
Aldona Machnowska-Góra accused Radziwiłł of “an attempt at censorship” and called his justification “bizarre” but “unsurprising”. She said that city hall would launch an appeal against Strzępka’s dismissal. That must be filed to the Provincial Administrative Court within 30 days.
In September, a public petition was launched calling on Warsaw’s mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, to dismiss Strzępka. It said that turning the theatre into a “radically feminist institution does not serve the common good or equality” and claimed that the vagina sculpture had been installed in a “shamanic ritual”.
The online petition obtained 23,914 signatures, although it is not known who the signatories are or where they are from.
Since coming to power in 2015, PiS has pursued a conservative cultural policy, including fighting what it calls “LGBT ideology” and “gender ideology”. It has also made changes in the leadership of a number of public cultural institutions, including museums, galleries, and theatres.
Main image credit: Teatr Dramatyczny/Facebook
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
