Spotlight | Asia Sztencel

Welcome to Broadway Stages’ Spotlight, where we feature local shops, restaurants, organizations, individuals, and venues. During October, we celebrate Polish-American Heritage and National Arts & Humanities month, and shine the spotlight on Asia Sztencel, an artist from Poland who has come to embrace and be embraced by the community of Greenpoint, Brooklyn and beyond.

We had the pleasure of meeting Asia through Sol Kjøk, our Artist-in-Residence and founder of NOoSPHERE Arts. Sol and Asia started their collaboration in 2019, when NOoSPHERE Arts engaged Asia to teach a painting workshop for kids during the Kingsland Wildflowers festival. Since then, Asia has become a regular NOoSPHERE Arts team member and frequently assists with its public arts programming.

Asia’s aproach to art is based on social practice, a medium that focuses on engagement through human interaction and social discourse. Her art and psychology education has prepared her well for this work. “I choose painting as a medium consciously. Because when you paint someone, you have the intimate moment…2-hour sessions usually. And it connects you.”

Asia’s art often documents a search for a sense of connection after having been disconnected. “I create projects that explore a sense of displacement and longing. My work focuses on the experience of being an immigrant and the imprinted memory of landscape.”

With this in mind, Asia, born and raised in Poland, found Greenpoint a natural fit for her work that documents the attachment one carries to the landscapes of their life. She first connected with the community in Greenpoint with a series of monotypes of Polish landscapes.

In 2019, Asia returned to Poland to interview and paint refugees from Chechnya, Syria, and Africa. Her work taught there that these experiences are not exclusive. “I wanted to include everyone’s experience, not only Polish immigrants,” she noted. “For me, the experience of the immigrant is universal. You carry landscapes with you. Landscapes from home but also the places that have impacted your life.”

For an artist who seeks community, the Pandemic presented a unique challenge. “I was dwelling for a while on the experience of 2020 and how many people are living the immigrant experience in their own country through quarantine experiencing displacement, longing, and separation. I wondered…are people watching Netflix in the search of some sense of their old lives.” Like so many, she realized she was trying to find a connection by watching videos online that brought forth memories of home. So, she painted screenshots of landscapes from popular Netflix series, trying to capture the metaphysical qualities of the landscape.

Asia’s work shows the bond between the artist and her subject and the subject and landscape. Beyond that, it evokes a relationship between the viewer and the artwork. The viewer gets a sense of connection outside of time and space. Asia portrays a landscape with personal meaning, even if you have not seen the landscape with your own eyes.

You can follow Asia’s work on Instagram or view it in person at the NOoSPHERE Arts exhibition Repopulations: New Horizons through October 23rd. To reserve a viewing, email daniela.holban@noosphere-arts.nyc. Or you can RSVP for the Closing Reception (Saturday, October 22nd, from 6-8PM).