RED HERRING
since 2017, ongoing
body / hybrid / melancholy / transformation
Red Herring is an ongoing project centered on a fictional hybrid figure – part human, part fish – emerging from the intersection of language, body, and affect. Drawing on the historical link between the spleen and melancholia, the work approaches emotion as something that can be externalized and take form.
At its core is a linguistic shift: the Polish word śledziona (spleen) contains śledź (herring) and ona (she), allowing the organ to transform into a figure.
The Red Herring emerges from this mistranslation – not as an error, but as a generative condition in which meaning remains unstable and unfolds through ambiguity.
The title evokes misdirection – a false trail used to redirect attention. In this project, confusion operates as method rather than failure, inviting the viewer into a space where perception is unsettled and interpretation remains open.
Across images and installations, repeated hybrid bodies appear in sparse, ambiguous landscapes. Both presence and decoy, they suggest that meaning, identity, and the body are not fixed, but continuously shaped through processes of translation, displacement, and uncertainty.
The hunters used Red Herrings to train their dogs to identify the scent of prey.
Applying confusion as a training method. What if they get confused themselves?
RED HERRING – the X/\/\ major arcana Tarot card
The card of misinterpretation and confusion
When the card appears in its UPRIGHT position you may be deaing with:
ambiguity · displacement · curiosity · confusion · alternative meanings · unexpected creation
It appears when something has been misunderstood, mistranslated, displaced or mistaken for something else – but instead of correcting the error, the error begins to generate a new reality.
Sometimes it appears when you are trying too hard to find the correct interpretation.
When the card appears in its REVERSED position:
obsession with certainty · false explanation · manipulation · self-deception · fixation on the wrong question
The card appears in the reversed position when you keep following the clue even after discovering that it is false.
more works from BODY / HYBRIDS / MYTH: