‘Primary Forms’, a series of exhibitions in primary schools conceived by Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2023 – 2024

The Inside Out Lion, 2023, storytelling game for children, with printed cards, dice, fabric bag, and ball of string

The Inside Out Lion, 2023

a storytelling game for children, commissioned by Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, for ‘Primary Forms’, a series of exhibitions in primary schools, 2023 – 2024

The Inside Out Lion is a storytelling game for children comprising of cards, dice and a ball of string. It was commissioned for a series of exhibitions taking place across primary schools in Poland. The structure of the story is decided by chance, as the children pick cards from piles representing characters and places, along with three objects dictated by a roll of the dice. The rules of the game ask the children to use their own imaginations and invent a story based on these elements. A third deck of bonus cards pose interesting questions or propose curious tasks and short games.

The Inside Out Lion, 2023, storytelling game for children, with printed cards, dice, fabric bag, and ball of string

‘Primary Forms’ was inspired by the School Prints initiative, carried out for a brief period in the UK after World War II. On that occasion, a set of lithographs created by a group of artists, including Barbara Jones, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, John Nash, Pablo Picasso and others, was sent to primary schools. ‘Primary Forms’ also alludes to other experiments in the fields of art and education undertaken in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These include the ‘Fluxkits’ – boxes prepared by artists affiliated with the Fluxus movement, containing scores, models, audio recordings, games, puzzles, and stencils, among other items; and ‘Pure Consciousness’ – the series of On Kawara’s exhibitions in kindergartens, initiated in 1998.

The Inside Out Lion, 2023, storytelling game for children, with printed cards, dice, fabric bag, and ball of string

The Inside Out Lion, 2023, storytelling game for children, with printed cards, dice, fabric bag, and ball of string

The box (resembling a large pencil case in shape) is designed by architect Maciej Siuda. The ‘Primary Forms’ programme is curated by Sebastian Cichocki and Helena Czernecka. Participating artists: Adriano Costa, Jaroslaw Flicinski, Veronika Hapchenko, Edith Karlson, Krzysztof Maniak, Ahmet Öğüt, Olivia Plender, Laure Prouvost.

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