Mama I Don’t Wanna Be Polish. I Wanna Be Famous
Exhibted at the Tate Late: Hurvin Anderson and Longlisted for Saatchi Evol 2026
Hannah Miller Forkin translates the machinery of internalised shame. The neoliberal woman. She presents a moving image work, compiling aseries of images that manifest the performance of the heterosexual woman. Arduous, repetitious, strategic, shallow, and tongue-in-cheek. Thework examines the neoliberal and patriarchal, self-as-capital, in the transformation of self as entrepreneur, and woman as what-is-attractive-to-a-man.
What is success to a woman? Miller-Forkin answers in images of pressured patriarchal femininity. “Mama I Don’t Wanna Be Polish. I Wanna Be Famous”, sets images of her in downward-dog, and posed for a 3D model, against the sound of her Polish Grandpa’s label machine. Sat in his front garden, the small label factory in Lodz was the first entrepreneurial venture in the family post-communism. The foundation of their financial security, now soon to be retired.
Miller-Forkin responds in extensions of herself as forms of capital and success, using digital motifs to reference her previous education, andfamily’s current success in architecture. Yoga and activewear reflect the western Yummy Mummy, her wellness, too, is a form of obedience andself improvement, and a flippant rejection of Polishness under the British class gaze. The work reflects on the politics of her desires as a youngwoman navigating adulthood, the humour, safety, and humiliation in adapting to and aspiring towards wealth and heterosexual partnership.