Anna Orłowska
Otherworlds
Sep 28 – Nov 18, 2023
Museum of the Earth
Pniewski's Villa
Na Skarpie 20/26
Warsaw
Curator: Katarzyna Roj
Co-organiser: BWA Wrocław – Galleries of Contemporary Art
Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2023:
Sep 28 – Oct 1, 2023
11 am – 7 pm
The worlds presented at the exhibition exist in parallel, but outside the boundaries of time. The past merges here with the present, and what connects them is the place – old Silesian village Sandowitz, today’s Żędowice. Around it unendingly orbit a few generations of the artist’s family. The centre of this orbit is a 19th century mill, once run by water from the Mała Panew river and gathering around itself the community of the old village. Orłowska evokes this mythical childhood place which has been in her family’s possession for one hundred and twenty years.
Orłowska’s new works are covered with a characteristic red dye. It comes from iron deposits permeating the entire area – since prehistory, the region of Żędowice was a metallurgical area, rich in bog ore, from which metal was smelted. Iron is an element which enabled the development of life on earth, for it is one of the components of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood. Orłowska dyes photographs printed on fabric in the iron slurry satiating the forest stream near her house. She thus develops new, visual qualities. Created in this way materials she cuts, tears, juxtaposes, saws together, braids, drapes, and once again in her artistic practice, transforms the photographic medium.
Anna Orłowska’s exhibition in the frame of Warsaw Gallery Weekend is a continuation of her double presentation concerning Silesian identity at BWA Wrocław (Otherworlds, 30.06 – 8.10.2023), and in a desacralized church in Szczytnicki Park [Otherworlds (Hidden Room), 22.06 – 17.09.2023].
Exhibition partners: Polish Academy of Sciences Museum of the Earth in Warsaw, BWA Wrocław – Galleries of Contemporary Art
