Oiko Petersen, Downtown Collection
November 9, 2010 – February 6, 2011
Fascinating World. Recognition and award for the Accessible Museum.
The exhibition of Oiko Petersen’s photographs is part of the cultural-creative mission of the Museum to make museum collections accessible to audiences with diverse needs and abilities, to create a friendly place for all to interact with art and culture, to integrate the often distant worlds of the able-bodied and disabled. In the case of Oiko Petersen’s exhibition, the Museum goes a step further – in the artist’s works, disability has taken center stage: the protagonists of the photographs – the artist’s models – are people with Down syndrome.
In the Downtown Collection series, the artist depicts more than a dozen people with Down syndrome in a fashion shoot style. He invites viewers to face their own prejudices and barriers, provokes a discussion on beauty and ugliness, and introduces us to the closed world of dreams, expectations, and joys of people often wrongly called mentally disabled.
“The title of the project – Downtown Collection – encapsulates its whole idea. On the one hand, it is meant to suggest the launch of a new urban clothing collection for the spring/summer season, and on the other, much more important to me – to introduce the viewer to the world of the ‘City of Downs,’” the artist explains, ”With this project, I would like to invite a trip to Downtown. In popular opinion, Down syndrome is associated with unhappiness and sadness, but in reality it can be quite different. If only we don’t look at people with Down syndrome through the prism of our normalcy we will quickly find out that “Down” doesn’t have to be sad and unhappy at all. We will discover that the inner world of people with Down syndrome can be surprising, funny and touching.
With this project, I attempt to interpret this world, because I believe it is an incredibly tempting alternative to our world. I believe it is a world of imagination – full of color, bright lights, unbelievable, crazy ideas, dance, music and amazing adventures. It turns out that we – the non-disabled, staying with people with Down syndrome are not condemned to eternal sacrificial help, because who knows if they are not the ones who help us much more than we help them. They help us to believe in love, truth and awaken our forgotten sensitivity.”
The Downtown Collection exhibition was realized within the framework of the project “Accessible Museum. Integrated program for people with disabilities”. In October 2010, this project was awarded in the competition “Poland Grows Beautiful – 7 Wonders of the European Funds”, and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage recognized the Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola as a leading institution in Poland in the subject of serving visitors with disabilities in the museum.
