"How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences - like rags and shreds of your very life."

- Katherine Mansfield

What is it that defines us? Is it the place of birth? Language? Culture? Is identity tied to a specific geographic location? Is it portable? Can identities be merged? These are the questions present in Magda Biernat's recent works. Spinning off her previous project that explored the notions of home, displacement and the in-between, "6,654 kilometers/4,135 miles" focuses on borders and the bridging of distances.

In this three-channel video installation a ritualistic mixing of water from the place of her birth with the water from the place she currently resides is a metaphor for her own hybrid identity. Anchoring the piece is a mason jar containing the resulting mix: equal parts from the Atlantic Ocean and the Baltic Sea. Besides exploring Biernat's personal situation of being between two cultures, the work questions the transformative quality of locations and geographies at a time when subjects are no longer bound to one particular place. In this way it portrays the physical rite of passage when crossing over geographic boundaries and pays homage to those displaced and struggling to find their identities within the context of “home.”