Meeting with the author on Thursday, May 25, at 18:00 / Exhibition open from 11.05 - 30.05.2023 / Pix.House Gallery, Glogowska 35a Street, Poznań
Sri Lanka is a tourist paradise, with a brutal ethno-religious conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils smoldering in the background for more than two decades. The fratricidal war has made Sri Lanka a country marked by blood and suffering, whose history the authorities still try to hide. A war unaccounted for, little media coverage, ignored by the international community and the powers that be, who, seeing no interest there, failed to respond to the genocide.*
A war that left a wounded nation, divided families, maimed people.
In the 1990s, members belonging to the rebel Tamil Tigers (LTTE), now considered a terrorist group, demanded the creation of an independent Tamil state, Ilam, in northern Sri Lanka, which started a civil war that lasted many years. As men died en masse on the battlefields, young brave women full of ideals joined the ranks of this army. They fought then for their freedom, dignity and rights; now they face the past as they try to cope with a difficult daily life. In 2009, the rebellion was crushed and the Sri Lankan authorities took control of the areas recognized by the Tamils as their separate state. The women who survived the inferno of the war found themselves in a new and equally complicated reality. They live stigmatized and socially excluded lives in their own country. They look back melancholically, gazing at the landscape around them, every element of which bears the scars of their history and the memory of their youth. The ruins of houses, the overgrown roots of trees, the tall grasses, the agonized surface of water become a mirror of a bygone time.
"Abandoned Daughters of the Tiger". is a story about Tamil women warriors, both those who fought on the front lines and those who fought outside - rejected, marginalized by the state and the system. These are women who were not given the opportunity to experience their youth, marked by the stigma of conflict, overlooked, unwanted, inconvenienced, still living in fear and left to fend for themselves despite the trauma. Women who continue to fight - for their right to exist with dignity, to be understood, and for a better life for their children. This is the story of the Tigresses - women of war, after which the dust does not fall....
Patrick Bulhak (1977) - photographer and traveler, lives permanently in Warsaw.
A graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Photography, he has worked for years as a DJ and promoter - in Poland and abroad. In his photographic projects, he mainly focuses on human attitudes towards complex socio-cultural changes, in different parts of the world, as well as on the history of regions
and its impact on the formation of modern human relations. Very often he pays special attention to the situation of women especially in the context of human rights. In 2016, he was the winner of the DEBUTS competition organized by doc! photomagazine.
Photographs from the award-winning series "Closed." have been shown in many group exhibitions at, among others, Luisa Catucci Gallery in Berlin, and in individual exhibitions at 6×7 Leica Gallery Warsaw, Pop-Up Ogrodowa 8 gallery in Lodz, Ratusz gallery in Zamosc, Cultural Center in Lublin, and most recently at Farbiarnia gallery in Bydgoszcz, as well as at photography festivals in Opole and Bielsko Biala.
The new project, "Abandoned Daughters of the Tiger," was premiered in Sopot in 2022 during the "Within Sopot" photography festival, and later at the KIT gallery in Berlin.