Post-consumer Art

„In 1971 I shortened my name. I detached myself from Natalia Lach-Lachowicz, I became Natalia LL. These model girls are my doubles.” (Natalia LL) Natalia LL's „Consumer Art” still gains new meanings to this day. In 1972-1975, when the artist ran a documentary project consisting of photographing manifestations of everyday life, such as eating - consuming, she was at the same time active, together with Andrzej Lachowicz and Zbigniew Dłubak among others, in the Permafo group, which proclaimed the postulate of „Permanent Art” - the recording of current events. It quickly turned out that the ordinary process of eating, stopped and multiplied in frames, can be interpreted as a half-erotic, partly disgusting act - if, for instance, the spat-out liquid trickles down the chin of the photographed model. It can also touch a chord of consumer culture - in the times of the People's Republic of Poland, the shortage of goods, and in the 1990s the need to acquire and surround oneself with things. In subsequent decades and during social transformations, Natalia LL's „Consumer Art” began to be considered also in the context of feminism, even though it was a woman who stood behind the camera lens. This multi-layered quality of interpretation, of presumed intentions, has rather not yet been exhausted, yet it gives a perfect picture of what conceptual art is, in whose current Natalia LL worked.