Studio visit: AHAHA

When it is dirty, they clean, and when you need a hand personalising your clothes, decorating your living room, or fighting your own tenacious prejudices, they roll up their sleeves. And they do it all with a smile. AGENDA turned labour inspectorate for a day to visit Polish workers Hanna Ilczyszyn and Anna Zuber. Ahaha!

“You have these stereotypes about the Polish. People immediately think of cleaning ladies and construction workers. But us painters, we are workers too,” says Anna Zuber, who in collaboration with Hanna Ilczyszyn, Sabina Jaworek, and Joanna Pszczoła aka JoBee Project is part of the four-member Polish Workers collective, which by joining forces and through an inventive, inclusive movement – we are all Polish workers! – aims to obliterate your prejudices with a smile. A year ago, the first two of these four Polish female artists residing in Brussels founded AHAHA, an open workspace near place Fernand Cocqplein, which is specialised in creative silkscreen prints. Anna Zuber: “You can normally only visit a studio if you make an appointment, but here you can just wander in to see…well, people working.” [Laughs]

The former hairdresser’s, snack bar, and hatter’s workshop that, after a few months of renovation, became the home of AHAHA exactly one year ago, has a playfully decorated display window in which printed fabrics – T-shirts with cats, handbags with power pylons, knickers with eyes – invitingly stare at passers-by. Inside, in a cosy and cheerful interior, you can find the duo’s silkscreen printing machine and Anna Zuber’s golden Berliner Mauer, that divides the space into two separate studios. The dirty work is all done in a dark cellar. Hanna Ilczyszyn: “From Wednesday to Saturday we are here to receive people. But we don’t just sit around waiting for people to come in. We spend that time working on our personal projects. I paint a lot, so when people do come in, I greet them with dirty hands. [Laughs] But that was the idea: we didn’t want to have a shop; it’s an open studio. It’s not a closed space, it’s a working space.”

The combination of their common silkscreen project – including live printing sessions on clothes that you would like to pimp, for example at Recyclart Holidays this summer – and their intimate personal work is a blessing. Anna Zuber: “Sitting by yourself all day in your studio is no fun. It’s nice to work together: you have some interaction, you get to meet people. And our personalities are very complementary.” Hanna Ilczyszyn: “But it’s not like we always sit next to each other when we’re working. We each have our personal space here as well. The silkscreen commissions sometimes demand more of our attention, but during other weeks we have more time for our own work. They are communicating vessels. Our common project provides more stability, and when people come inside, they can also get to know our personal projects. But we weren’t really planning this. It was an opportunity we eagerly accepted.” Anna Zuber: “Precisely! If I had told people before: ‘In five years’ time we will be printing cats on T-shirts in Brussels’, nobody would have believed it.”

Hanna Ilczyszyn and Anna Zuber have known each other since they studied painting together in Wroclaw. Their Erasmus trips took them to Ghent and France, respectively. After completing her studies in Poland, Hanna Ilczyszyn returned to Ghent, but a year and a half later – “I needed a change” – she moved to Brussels. Anna Zuber: “My sister had already been living in Brussels for years. She was the one who convinced me to come over and check out the city. That was five years ago. It was not planned at all, but I like it. Brussels is a very open and international city. I don’t feel like a stranger here. It’s important to feel at home if you’re living abroad. That’s my idea of Brussels: everybody can feel good here. You know, this has always been my dream: to have a studio, to do a job like this... Usually, after your studies, you have no clue if you will manage to make your dreams come true, because obviously it isn’t easy...never, nowhere. I left Poland because I felt that I didn’t have many possibilities there at that time. Actually, that was mostly just in my head, but I’m happy that I took the plunge anyway.”

That self-made happiness is palpable in the atmosphere of the studio. The light pours in across a beautiful tile floor; there are little tiles and a box of gold leaf belonging to Anna Zuber on a table made of cardboard and MDF boards; a Chinese lucky cat cheerfully waves at you from the table; and behind the golden wall, you can see Hanna Ilczyszyn’s paintings and easel. A few large mirrors make the space look even bigger and create an estranging juxtaposition of the two artists’ work, which is scattered all over the walls – a whole bunch of small, gold-covered postcards and photographs from Anna Zuber’s Memories series and a large selection of Hanna Ilczyszyn’s beautiful yet disturbing paintings. At AHAHA, one plus one equals more than two. The intriguing, coagulated, hushed scenes of children set in gloomy light and painted in understated, meticulously balanced hues by Hanna Ilczyszyn and Anna Zuber’s rebellious yet subtle uses and misuses of the ancient language of gold in the street and the studio engage here in an exciting interplay of intimacy and unknowability, melancholy and aspiration. Like two routes to distinct artistry, that nonetheless share a core. Anna Zuber: “You can’t define the artist. Everybody is different. As an artist, you want to express something that touches you. It’s always personal because it comes from inside.” Hanna Ilczyszyn: “Precisely, and that’s what art should at least aspire to be: real.”

The caption “Let my paint die with the wall” is written across the very real Berliner Mauer right in the middle of the space. Melancholy and aspiration in one. Whether it is walls, or prejudices: tearing them down is a dirty job. Thank God we have Polish workers!

BOROUGH: Elsene/Ixelles
AHAHA: Collegestraat 40 rue du Collége, Elsene/Ixelles, We > Sa 12 > 18.00 & by appointment
FUTURE EVENTS: 7/6, live printing at Tarmac Pop-Up Store, Aalst; 20/6, MAD Vintage straat, MADtiger, Vilvoorde; 28/6, AHAHA birthday party in the studio; 11/7, live printing at Brussel Danst, Muntpunt; 26/6 > 1/8, every Thursday, live printing at Recyclart Holidays, www.recyclart.be
INFO: www.ahaha.be, fajnahanna.com, www.zubzub.pl

Photos © Heleen Rodiers