Heritage-making as artistic practice? Mateusz Okoński’s cabinet of curiosities as fleeting heritage

Is it possible to create heritage through artistic practice? The authors ask this question through the perspective of the work of Mateusz Okoński, a Polish mid-career artist and exhibition designer whose passion for collecting has resulted in the creation of a cabinet of curiosities at his private apartment in Kraków. The discussion in the article encompasses the practice of the collection’s creation, the temporality of the objects and the collection itself, the authenticity of the cabinet of curiosities, and also the various multi-sensory narratives which are offered by the artist to those who visit his salon. The authors investigate whether such collecting and the resulting cabinet of curiosities comprises heritage or whether it is merely an act of collecting historic objects, and conclude that heritage-making can be the result of artistic practice.