Joanna Piotrowska. Frowst

Joanna Piotrowska. Frowst

18.09 – 06.12.2020

Joanna Piotrowska’s first comprehensive monographic exhibition in Poland presents a selection of her works from the past few years. The title of the exhibition — Frowst — was taken from one of Piotrowska’s first photographic series, which brought her international recognition.

Frowst brings to mind the dense air of an unaired-out apartment, saturated with complicated family relationships. The series was inspired by the pseudo-scientific, manipulative method of “organising tangled and broken family ties” developed by German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger. Based on the observation of body positions and gestures, the tense, staged photographs showing family systems of dependencies were created. The exhibition feature also works influenced by the American feminist and psychologist Carol Gilligan, who dealt with the issues of women’s voice and resistance. Subject of power and violence appears also in the latest series of photographs documenting cages and animal enclosures arranged in a pattern of human dwellings.

Joanna Piotrowska—visual artist, photographer, born in 1985 in Warsaw. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and the Royal College of Art in London. Her works have been presented, among others, at the MoMA in New York, at the 10th Berlin Biennale, at Tate Britain in London and at a solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland.

Curator: Magdalena Komornicka