We invite you to the exhibition of the winner of the Talent of the Year 2023 competition.
The blue of the far distance | Emilia Martin
location: Pix.House Gallery 35a Glogowska St. Poznan
deadline: 24.11 – 14.12.2023
exhibition opening: 24.11.2023 | 17:00
author tour: 24.11.2023 | 18.00
The exhibition is open in Thursdays from hrs. 17:00 to 20:00 - Entry via Pix.house bookstore.
admission free
"The blue of the far distance". is a long-term, artistic exploration of the relationship between humans and the starry sky in an era of pervasive light pollution. Working on the research, instinctively going with the flow of the creative process, Emilia visited numerous amateur observatories. In some, the sky became too bright to see anything, while in others the artist saw hand-built planetariums scrupulously hidden on the ceilings of private rooms, farms and sheds.
Inspired by the concept of hand-crafted representations of the universe, Emilia builds her own cosmic universe, full of hope and speculation about what our reality could look like. Thus, the project "The blue of the far distance" is a safe place of escape, a collage full of cosmos on a human scale and a juxtaposition of the everyday and the unique.
Emilia Martin (born in 1991 in Poland, currently lives and works in The Hague, Netherlands) is an artist fascinated by stories and myths and how they shape our realities. In her works, Emilia uses photography, sound and text, exploring the boundaries between different media. The artist grew up in two radically different realities: on her grandmother's farm located in eastern Poland, where ancient beliefs and myths prevailed, and in Silesia, an industrial region in western Poland, where daily life was shaped by patriarchal and extractivist values. The collision of these two worlds created a space that inspires the artist and influences her work. In her work, Emilia weaves realities based on feminist assumptions of concern for the natural environment and undisturbed coexistence.
Organizer: Pix.house foundation | https://pix.house/
curatorial support: Adrian Wykrota
The exhibition is part of the project "PIX.LAB - educational laboratory of photography" co-financed by the City of Poznań and the Marshal's Office of the Wielkopolska Region.
Bert Degenaar, a Dutch antique collector with a particular interest in astronomical objects holds a representation of the moon entirely made of gold with a single diamond representing the place of the first steps of Neil Armstrong. The diamond makes me wonder, how much is a human fascination with space focused around conquering it?
I visited Los Angeles which is one of the most light polluted places in the US in 2015. As the urban legend states, once during the electricity cut the city went completely dark and the milky way appeared back on the sky. The citizens were so frightened by the alien object on the sky that many of them kept on reporting it to the police throughout the night. The stars I used for the collage are a scan from the book published in the 1924 titled "The Book of the Heavens" by Mary Proctor. Mary Proctor wanted to follow the footsteps of her father and become an astronomer, yet it was impossible for her because of her gender. She instead became a great populariser of astronomy writing multiple books about astronomy for both adults and children.
Through the photographic manipulation of an image with the use of the long exposure I explore the theme of what visibility means in the anthropocentric reality I inhabit. With the use of long exposure I created a visual reflection on the link between visibility and light. While the light in the image creates a shape in such a way that it suggests connection to a vision of a person portrayed it is also blinding, makes it impossible for us to see a person's face or anything around. With the image I hope to criticize the anthropocentric perception of vision and light.
