Vernissage on Saturday, December 7 at 6 pm / the exhibition will last until January 1, 2025 / Kazamaty Gallery, Old Prochownia SCEK / Boleść 2 Street, Warsaw / The exhibition is open daily from 2 - 7 pm
The exhibition crowns the curatorial Mentorship Program at the Art Studio. The idea behind this many months of collective cooperation in a creative group was to develop the individualism of its participants, hence the individual realizations are so diverse in nature, surprising in their boldness in taking up themes and forms of exposition. Thus, they build a special polyphony of a strongly emotional character, boldly touching on the subject of the limits of existence / cognition / feeling and areas covered by social taboos. The presented series are united by the problematized issue of human "boundary", although at the same time they are four visual stories from different thematic and formal areas.
Kamila Radka addresses issues related to the pressure of the myriad developmental models of contemporary culture on the delicate tissue of female sensitivity. It touches on areas vulnerable to overstimulation, needing protection from the frenetic pace of modern life. The need to take care of what is fragile, sensitive, tender in us - and through this especially precious.
Adam Romanski touches on the subject of death in two complementary series. In the first, he presents photographs of graves taken just before burial, as well as images of the hands of the dead prepared for the final farewell. The literal and direct representations confront the viewer with a subject we cannot be indifferent to. Even when viewed up close, it remains an impenetrable mystery, it brings cognitive and emotional perplexity and forces us to think.
Jan Skwara presents collodion photographs in a related thematic area - in magnificent portraits we look into the eyes of Aghori shamans, people who live on the borderline between the world of the living and the dead, reconciling these two worlds, seeking an interface they consider open and natural. They teach us to tame the inevitable, although they break the accepted rules and cross the area of taboos, they ritually invite participants into the space of the world expanded in rituals.
Robert Sobieraj confronts the viewer with the mystery of understatement. It applies equally to the photographs, which are understated in meaning, as well as to the poetic self-commentary and graphically intriguing, almost illegible notes of therapeutic meetings, encoded on A4 pages in rhythmic arrangements of letters. The author talks about the openness of space and its limitation, about the search for unbounded freedom, but also about the fact (the need) of the existence of checkpoints that cannot be crossed, about the key-words for finding understanding and the wall-words for "safely" avoiding too invasive contact. It's a project in which the image / word / mystery build an indefinite tension in the viewer to leave him in it.
Jan Skwara - Aghori. They are a notorious group of followers of the god Shiva who use human corpses in rituals and ritually
consumes human flesh. The Aghori, following the example of their god, meditate on funeral pyres, around which they also tend to live. They are said to be somewhere between life and death. They often reside near funeral pyres,
and they use human bodies for their rituals. They perform puja by sitting on corpses and obtain "human oil" by burning the body over a fire. Because they occasionally use necrophagy (eating human flesh), they are commonly referred to as cannibals. I, however, wanted to get to know the people hiding inside the ash-smeared bodies, to understand their motivations, faith and perseverance on the intricate spiritual path of each of them. I heard the remarkable stories that brought them to the Aghori path. Sometimes frightening, sometimes personal and touching.
The technique used in the project is the collodion process, invented in 1851, which requires direct access to a darkroom during photography. Such a darkroom must therefore be in mobile form. Collodion is a solution of nitrocellulose, or in gun cotton in ether and ethanol. That is, an explosive substance dissolved in an explosive and another extremely flammable substance. Other substances are mutagenic and carcinogenic. So you really have to be on high alert, careful and focused. It also rules out air transportation, getting to photographic locations requires land or water travel.
Many times this means transporting tens of kilograms of equipment to high mountains, or into the middle of the jungle. My traveling darkroom is more than 20kg, chemistry about 5-10kg, camera with tripod another 5kg. The 200 glass plates on which the photos are created is another 25kg. Add to that clothes, digital camera, it gets up to 80kg. And more than once I happened to travel with all this on trains and buses.
Cycle Kamila Radka's act of tenderness explores the space of a woman's intimate relationship with herself, raising questions about the authenticity, development and place of contemporary femininity in culture. It was born out of the pressures imposed by contemporary developmental or goddess models. We are encouraged to jump over the high bar set and at the same time cut ourselves off from our past, so often considered something shameful, imperfect. It's as if on this developmental path we forget to be a tender mother to ourselves.
The frames captured in this series are acts of self-worth determination. They show an attempt at a balanced step between an idyllic vision of femininity and unpredictable, fragile everyday life. The photographs depict both gestures of taking care of ourselves and moments of introspection that serve to strengthen our relationship with ourselves. These gestures come from our adult inner selves, through which we are able to intuitively take care of ourselves. In this visual narrative, I try to meet the real needs: sensitivity, stopping time, connection with nature, acceptance of fatigue, self-creation, the achievement of which completes the image of a fulfilled person.