Open studio in the frames of artist in residency

 

ul. Jaskółcza 1, Gdańsk Dolne Miasto
 

14.12.2018 – 20.01.2019

Opening: 14.12.2018, 6 pm

 

 

“I collect, contemplate and photograph each detail that touches me, which could by its mere presence tell a story. I want to make dead objects speak, to give them a voice where their usefulness has vanished.”
 
 
                                                                                                                                                                                                Hélène Thiennot
 
 
At the exhibition the artist will present three works realised during her residency in Gdansk: “Absences”, “Mnemosyne” and “Paysages-poussière”.

The artist about her works:
 

Absences

The photographic installation ‘Absences’ is the product of my wanderings and reflections around the city of Gdansk. A city with tormented and fragmented history which played a decisive role in the fall of the Iron Curtain thanks to "Solidarity" movement. With an intensive and  traumatising memory, the city fascinated me with its architecture and the way it continues to evolve nowadays: ruins side by side with ultra-modern buildings or even fake historic buildings getting lost amongst old churches. I see Gdansk as a body that heals through its constructions, reconstructions and deconstructions.

I think stones are, in a way, alive. I imagine them as small cells which build up the body of the city where buildings become organs. They are silent witnesses to the bruises of history by bearing its after-effects. In my work, I have collected fragments of red bricks  – the typical construction material which can be found in almost every district of the city. I have also done photographic work by searching for dormant places, abandoned in most cases, left here in the landscape like ghosts. Both emptied of their senses but still present, these places seem frozen in a space and a time. They are proof of past events. This state remains however temporary, as each space must find a specific purpose in a modern city, be replaced or renovated. These small hints will disappear, erasing part of the collective memory, identical to a loss of memory that everyone can feel at its scale.

Therefore, the piece is constructed from two dialogical elements: the former – organised, consists of classic photographs with missing pieces; and the latter – disorganised, presents these missing and lost fragments printed on bricks with the use of photosensitive solution. The solution reacts to its foundation. The more damaged the stone is, the more damaged the image will be. The more porus the stone is, the more the image is absorbed by the latter, becoming only a latent spectrum, almost invisible to the eye. The memory is weak, it gets erased or retains only parts. But forgetting is also a risk, the risk that tragic situations repeate as if history was only a cycle.
 

Mnémosyne

Mnemosyne – the Greek goddess of memory, inspired the art historian Aby Warburg to the practice that resulted in his famous work Mnemosyne Atlas. His method sought to produce quasi-physical comparisons of juxtaposed images from various horizons, ranging from classical Renaissance through Hopi Indians to the advertising of his time.

This series is inspired by these collections of fragments. It is in perpetual expansion, corresponding to my photographic practice which, over time, is enriched. In a way, it is an image of my own memory: memories sometimes absent, disordered, forgotten, latent. The viewer has to bend down to read these tiny photographs and try to link them like a large mosaic of half-opened windows on the intimacy of my memories. Here, I work on the Polish part of the project.

 
Paysages-poussière (dust landscapes)

This project began in 2013 with the first drawings and was recently re-opened during this residency. I use local dust to create imaginary landscapes, inspired by real landscapes.

The dust is a strong symbolic representation: it is the last material step of things before their total disappearance. Nowadays, the environmental situation is becoming extremely serious and is tending towards the destruction of our planet, our landscapes and ourselves because of our way of life. All the pictures/views we know will eventually change or disappear to become dust.

When I arrived to LAZNIA CCA for a residency, I noticed that black dust settling on my desk every time I opened the window. This dust, carried by the wind, comes from the city’s thermal power station. So I decided to collect it and work with it to create this new series of “paysages-poussière”.

 

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