‘Song to the Siren (Echo)’ by Rafał Zajko at Frieze Focus.
Zajko’s multifaceted practice destabilises linear narratives that connect past, present, and future, embodying a singular type of speculative fiction that is at once visceral, darkly humorous, and inherently queer. Rooted in memories of childhood in post-communist Poland and combined with the contemporary experience of life in London’s late-capitalist landscape, his work articulates a complex negotiation between personal history and broader cultural imaginaries.  Drawing on histories of design, architecture and industrialisation, as well as folklore and science fiction, his sculptures often possess an overwhelming buzz of potentiality that either remains unrealised or thrusts them into the realm of performance. 

‘Song to the Siren (Echo)’ is a body of work that re-examines the siren’s role in our world of constant alerts, created with a wide range of materials including ceramics, costume, fresco, set building and pickling. At the centre of the presentation is Amber Chamber III, an inhabitable sculpture crafted from modern Valchromat and inlaid with handmade terracotta tiles. The work extends an ongoing series of Chambers, and in this iteration, the Chamber is inhabited through performative actions during the week of the fair. ‘Song to the Siren (Echo)’  interrogates the cyclical nature of cultural consumption and nostalgia. Once a mythical lure and later an industrial signal, the siren is reinterpreted for its visual and auditory significance. Zajko incorporates motifs of civil defence sirens, vocal anatomy and symphonic layouts to explore the interplay between technology, architecture, bodily rhythms and collective experience. Rather than dwell on themes of loss, the work highlights radical queer potentialities, rethinking bodily boundaries through architecture and sculptural arrangements.