09.02 - 11.03.2018
Marta Zgierska. Post
Address: IFF Gallery, Fort Mokotów, ul. Racławicka 99, building 6
Opening hours: Wednesday to Friday 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM, Saturday and Sunday 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Opening: February 9, 2018 (Friday), 7 PM
Guided tour: February 10, 2018 (Saturday), 2 PM
Admission fee during opening and guided tour: free
Admission fee 11.02.2018 – 11.03.2018: 7 PLN
Curator: Adam Mazur
In 2013, Marta Zgierska survived a serious car accident and several months of intense hardship (surgical procedures, physiotherapy, depression, etc.). This traumatic event completely redefined her photographic work and gave rise to “Post”.
By attempting to embody her trauma through photography, Marta Zgierska uses an autobiographical approach. She distances herself symbolically from her fears and anxieties and fixes them in a pure form, producing fragile pictures that hang on by a thread... Glacial, almost silent images, that form the conundrum of a conversation reduced to the bare essentials, the visual articulation of the minimal language of survival. A rock suspended on a rope, a light-coloured coat spattered with blood, the chassis of a compacted car, a woman's hand with a bloody lifeline: each photograph metaphorically evokes a part of her own story, suggesting it elliptically with clinical aesthetics. A hand-written letter is also depicted as a photograph. This is the focal point of her story: using the words of a former teacher describing her at the age of seven, a very good pupil and liked by all, the young woman clearly shows us the persistent discrepancy that she feels today, faced with the world.
Diane Dufour, Director of LE BAL in Paris
Descriptive evaluation of the primary school student
Class I, the first semester
Schoolgirl Marta Zgierska is talented, conscientious and hard-working. During lessons she is very active and focused. She has a rich vocabulary and a large body of knowledge. She can build a coherent, complex statement, correct in terms of material and grammar. She reads fluently and expressively. She writes very nicely and accurately in terms of language and spelling.
She is fluent in mental arithmetic. She solves simple and more complex text exercises. She can apply in practice acquired knowledge. She is interested in phenomena occurring in nature, she knows their causes and effects.
She shows extensive interests and talents. She has good manners. She is friendly and liked by other children.
The Teachers' Board, 19th January, 1995
Małgorzata Smalec
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Marta Zgierska – born in 1987, Lublin, Poland. She holds an MFA in Photography (The Leon Schiller National Film, Television and Theatre School), MA in Theatrology and MA in Journalism (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University). In her artwork she deals with the subject of trauma, liminal experiences and associated tensions. After a serious car accident, her body, physically affected, naturally became a tool for studying reality. In her current works she is stitching painful performative processes in colorful sweet aesthetics, taken from the visual code characteristic for the modern beauty industry, to tell about current oppression of feminine body. She explores the canons of feminine beauty and undermines the pressure that the contemporary society exerts on the woman’s image. In 2015 she was named one of Lens Culture's Top 50 Emerging Talents. In 2016 she won one of the most prestigious photography awards – Prix HSBC pour la Photographie and also Daylight Photo Awards, Reminders Photography Stronghold Grant, FotoLeggendo Giovanni Tabo Prize and Kolga Tbilisi Photo Award. In the same year she was nominated for the ING Unseen Talent Award. Her project "Post" has been published as a book by Actes Sud in 2016. It received the PDN Photo Annual Award (2017). Her works were exhibited at Finnish Museum of Photography (Helsinki, 2017), International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum (Geneva, 2017), Museum Dr. Guislain (Gent, 2017), Musée de la Photographie André Villers (Mougins, 2016), Galerie Esther Woerdehoff (Paris, 2016).
OFFER OF WORKS FOR SALE AND RENTAL OF THE EXHIBITION
All photographs shown at the exhibition are available for sale. The full presentation, including dimensions, editions, techniques and prices, can be viewed and downloaded here
For more information please contact us: biuro@fiff.org.pl
