DENIM III, RAFAŁ ZAJKO / ZOEE
Saturday 28th June 2025
Palazzo Contarini Polignac
Dorsoduro 874, 30123 Venice
Live performance and video installation reworking earlier collaborations and rituals of mourning.
In Denim III, Rafał Zajko presents a new performative configuration developed in collaboration with Harriet Zoe Pittard (aka Zoee). The work interlaces Zajko’s sculptural and performative practice with Pittard’s sonic world, culminating in a live performance and a video installation. This marks the premiere of a new iteration of their collaboration.
At the center of the presentation is a video work originally shown in Zajko’s solo exhibition Spin Off (Focal Point Gallery, 2025), now placed in dialogue with live elements drawn from earlier performances such as Interludium and Denim. Reimagined specifically for the Venetian context, Denim III invokes ritual, resilience, and cyclicality through gestures.
The performance builds toward a powerful vocal moment: a reinterpretation of a traditional Polish funeral song from Podlasie, interwoven with Pittard’s layered soundscape. Drawing on their decade-long collaboration, the artists create a hybrid space where memory, sound, and bodily presence converge, inviting reflection on cycles of loss, transformation, and collective mourning.
Written by Dobromila Blaszczyk
Rafał Zajko is a visual artist whose sculptural practice draws on folklore, industrial heritage, and queer aesthetics to explore themes of transformation and collective memory.
Zajko’s work merges the innate tenderness and intimacy of manual labour against that of mechanical manufacturing and utilitarian design. Existing somewhere between the primary colour brilliance of the Memphis group and the dark sci-fi influences of architect Carlo Scarpa- Zajko’s sculptural installations are as unsettling as they are humorous.
He has presented solo exhibitions including The Spin Off (Focal Point Gallery, 2025), Clocking Off (Queercircle, 2023), Song to the Siren (Cooke Latham Gallery, 2022), and Amber Waves (Public Gallery, 2021). His sculptural commission Bread and Milk was shown at Kunsthalle Wien in 2023. Zajko’s work has also been exhibited in group shows at the Whitechapel Gallery, South London Gallery, X Museum in Beijing, and Bold Tendencies in London. He was awarded the Abbey Fellowship at the British School at Rome in 2024. He lives in London and works internationally.
Harriet Zoe Pittard (aka Zoee) is a musician, vocalist, and sound artist whose practice merges experimental pop with spoken word, electronic textures, lo-fi ambience, and performative sensibilities. Her music has been described as ‘personal pop for people who don’t fit in,’ bridging emotional vulnerability with playful sonic experimentation. She explores identity and intimacy through recorded music and live performance.
Her debut album, Flaw Flower, was released in 2021 on the Bristol label Illegal Data. She has collaborated with artists such as SOPHIE and Hot Chip's Joe Goddard, and released music via Ryan Hemsworth’s Secret Songs and Vegyn’s Plz Make It Ruins. Her latest single, Moth to a Flame, featuring Nourished By Time, came out through Scenic Route. She is the founder of the independent label Scrawl World Limited and regularly collaborates with visual artists, most recently creating a sound piece with Rafał Zajko for Focal Point Gallery. Currently, she is developing an Arts Council England–funded vocal score in collaboration with performance artist Louise Orwin. She lives in London and works internationally.
This project is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland from the Culture Promotion Fund.
Cultural event of the Polish presidency of the Council of the EU.
