Versingforms of Podlasie: Poetry, Memory and Visual Imagery
During his residency at Mochnarte, artist Antos Sivyh explored the poetic character and myth-making potential of Podlasie, transforming poems and folk songs into visual works — Versingforms.
The artist focused on works in Belarusian, Podlachian and Polish, as well as on meetings with local writers, poets, regional researchers and residents.
Together with ethnographer Iryna Pavlovich, Antos visited nearby villages and towns, documented local stories and spoke with people who perceive and preserve the cultural heritage of these places in different ways. He selected works by both contemporary authors and earlier generations, as well as verses from folk songs, transforming them into visual imagery.
Versingforms is an artistic practice that Antos Sivyh has been developing for seven years. It is a way of transferring poetry into a different medium and context by working with words and letters, visual imagery, composition and movement. Through this practice, the artist creates space for conversations about poetry and the themes it explores, regardless of the audience’s language or background.
During the residency, Antos led a workshop for young participants of the Heta My podcast — an initiative dedicated to Belarusian culture, language and identity in Podlasie. Each participant created their own Versingform based on a selected text, developing an individual visual style in the process.
One of the works created during the residency featured Mark’s painted boots, which had accompanied the artist on his travels for thirteen years, including a long journey from Scandinavia to Podlasie.
On one boot, Antos painted verses from the folk song “A Chyia To Khata” (“Whose House Is That?”). A version of the song was discovered in the village of Zbucz and transcribed from the singing of Katia Tikhanyuk. The other boot featured verses from the lullaby “Kuyе, Kuyе Nozhku” (“Rock, Rock the Little Leg”), which the artist remembers from his great-grandmother’s singing in the Slutsk region. In Studziwody, Darafiej Fionik also sang the lullaby in Podlachian.
Five fragments of poems were placed on a board between the boots — one from each region along the artist’s journey through the borderlands.
For Antos Sivyh, Podlasie remains a space for further exploration, creative discovery and new interpretations of cultural heritage — both that which has been preserved for centuries and that which is being created today.
︎︎︎ Antos Sivyh
Antos Sivyh (born in 1999 in Minsk) is a visual artist, filmmaker, and inventor based in Łódź, Poland. His interdisciplinary practice spans visual poetry, calligraphy, video art, documentary film, and participatory projects.
Since 2018, he has been developing VERSINGFORMS, an experimental artistic practice in which poems are transformed into visual structures through handwritten text, gradually turning language into image. His work explores language, displacement, urban space, and collective experience, often engaging people in projects carried out in public spaces.
In 2020, he founded Lodka Production in Łódź, producing independent films, video art, and site-specific projects. In 2024, he held his first solo exhibition at the Museum of the Artist’s Book in Łódź. Antos continues to develop interdisciplinary projects exploring the relationship between poetry, image, and perception.
