Indian yellow/bile — one of the most beautiful and perfect colors in history, was once extracted from the urine of severely starved cows.

ŻÓŁĆ is a word that exists only in Polish, written entirely with Polish letters. Everyone knows the feeling it names. At least once in life, everyone has been consumed by it.

ŻÓŁĆ is cheap gold; it’s envy, kitsch, and the old internet; yellowed plastic and paper. It’s your home on a VHS tape and your father, drinking and liver-failing, who stayed behind in the countryside.

I am a child of the post-Communist transformation era — an era that cultivated ŻÓŁĆ in me.

ŻÓŁĆ toward money, toward careers, toward the rich, toward family, toward art, toward aspirations, toward success, toward other artists, toward my own childhood, and toward myself.

Polish ŻÓŁĆ is one of the most beautiful and perfect raw materials we have.

(ŻÓŁĆ — literally “bile” — in Polish carries the taste of bitterness, resentment, and a yellowed, decaying nostalgia.)