Nest

Marcin Dudek's exhibition NEST at Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels, reconstructs the artist's fifty-square-meter family apartment, where he lived with seven relatives. The installation transforms the domestic interior into a hybrid structure, part period room, part sculptural installation, and part theatrical environment. Devoid of furniture, the space spatializes memory rather than representing it, functioning as a psychological and social map. A taxidermied hoopoe, referencing the artist's surname, marks the entrance, introducing a theme of doubling. Within the apartment, elements like a radiator with a sculpted hand and a painting of a snake and eggs circulate meaning without fixed allegory, treating memory as mutable and relational.

The installation incorporates material traces from Dudek's youth, such as windows, curtains, scorched photographs, court documents, and early sketches, interwoven with gestures that evoke lived moments. These include the glow of a television, the training of a brother, parcels from international aid networks, and an early oil painting. Four works from the Klatka series act as altar-like structures containing fragments of life. The exhibition also features a large painting of the surrounding housing estate, painted over a panel with nearly three hundred thousand medical tape cuts, symbolizing collective presence. Finally, a reconstruction of Café Cobra, an underworld bar from Dudek's neighborhood, is presented as a site of informal community and resilience.