Tributaries, vibrations, afterimages and songs on the banks - Malgorzata Lebda, Rafal Siderski

Vernissage 04.10.2024, at 19.00, Poprzeczna Gallery, 3 Poprzeczna Street, Miechow

In the beginning there was an idea that turned into an adventure Reading Water: Vistula, during which poet, scientist, ultramarathoner Malgorzata Lebda ran a distance of 1113 km along the Vistula River in 28 September days in 2021. She was accompanied by Rafal Siderski, a visual artist who created his own visual narrative about the river and supported Lebda's run. This adventure could be followed in Pismo magazine, almost on a regular basis. 

After a year, an exhibition was held at the Sleńdzinski Gallery in Bialystok Flow(s). This was the first creative reworking of the experience gathered in September 2021. The curator of that exhibition, Michal Sita, wrote in the accompanying text: The narratives constructed for the exhibition - this one visual and textual - are not the final version of the story.... This is also what happened. 

In 2024, a photo book was published Tributaries, vibrations, afterimages and songs on the banks (Layers Publishing House). It resounds with the double voice - visual and literary - of the aquatic narratives of both artists. The exhibition at the Transverse Gallery will be another installment, and different from previous ones, of how the river and its experience works for Siderski and Lebda.

Malgorzata Lebda - She grew up in a Beskid village. She is the author of six books of poetry, including award-winning volumes of Matecznik i Uckermärker dreams (Gdynia Literary Award 2019). The latest volume entitled Mer de Glace (Layers Publishing House, 2021) was awarded the Wislawa Szymborska Prize (2022). Her books have been published in translation into Czech, Italian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Danish, Romanian. Doctor of humanities and audiovisual arts. A columnist. Animator of culture. Editor. Researcher. Lecturer at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Ultramarathoner (in September 2021 she covered, running, a distance of 1113 kilometers along the longest Polish river Vistula, realizing the activist-poetic project "Reading Water" (https://magazynpismo.pl/soczewka/czytanie-wody-wisla/). Novel Greedy (Znak Publishing House, 2023) is her prose debut. The novel has been sold to four countries: UK, Spain, France, Serbia, talks with more countries (Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Ukraine...) underway. Work on a film adaptation is underway. The book has been awarded the Empik Discovery Award, the Wielkopolska Readers' Literary Award and received a nomination for the Conrad Prize, and is in the finals of the Angelus (2024) and Nike (2024) Central European Literary Awards.

Rafal Siderski (born 1984). Visual artist working mainly with photography. He completed his doctoral studies at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava. Currently working as an assistant professor at Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa. He is part of the Albom.pl initiative for digitizing and working on photographic archives. In 2019, he published a book Leave Stay, and in 2024 a book was premiered Tributaries, vibrations, afterimages and songs on the banks. In his spare time he is "going somewhere" or is "somewhere". www.rafalsiderski.com, Instagram: @rafal.siderski