In my creative explorations, I focus on issues related to migration, identity, and environment. My works balance on the border between document and creation, being at the same time an artistic and research practice. I’m trying to construct visual statements on socio-political topics, referring to scientific and para-science by searching archives, collecting stories through interviews, or working with local communities. Through long-term photographic projects, using ethnographic methods, I try to research sociological, historical, ecological, or even mental phenomena and talk about them in a multi-layered way, emphasizing the complexity of topics that I undertake. I have an academic background in photography and anthropology, which I am trying to translate into less hierarchical structures.
Practice: Photographer and fresh anthropologist researching topics related to gardening, plants, migration and inclusion in the context of climate change.
Areas of interest: migration, gardening, transnationalism, identity, more than human communities.
Past projects
Waiting for the snow
Type: Photography
“Waiting for the Snow” is a photographic project that I make together with Marianne Wasowska, about Polish migration to the Brazil and Argentina during the partitions (19th century) and the interwar period. On the one hand, we gather stories based on the collective memory of the Polish community about the country of origin and the beginnings of settlement in the new homeland. On the other hand, we focus on the creolization and mixing of cultures and observe how the Slavic background has interlaced with the South American context, creating a concept of identity based on reconstruction, fiction, and fantasy.
Forget-me-not.
Cultivating soil, memory, and relations in an urban intercultural garden
Type: Writing
This work explores the relationships, emotions, and memories in the community gardening initiative “Intercultural Allotment Garden” in Poznań established in 2022 for those experiencing migration or exile. Using an anthropology-in-action approach, interweaving research with the organization of space for the Intercultural Allotment Garden, it seeks to uncover the multifaceted factors, obstacles, and emotions encountered by newcomers in the context of the current political and social atmosphere in Poland. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and literature, it conceptualizes intercultural gardens as transnational spaces and illustrates how diverse experiences from different countries come together in the realm of gardening. By presenting a collection of gardeners’ stories, it analyzes the role of the garden as a repository of memories and explores how past gardening experiences shape the unique bond between plants and people and their impact on the well-being of gardeners in the context of migration and exile. This holistic exploration underscores the interrelationship between human involvement in gardening and the broader ecological context. Throughout the study, a multidisciplinary approach was taken to comprehensively explore the intricate area of memories, emotions, relationships, and the role that Family Allotment Gardens can play in the social inclusion of those who experience migration or exile.
It so happens that the world is not what it seems
Type: Photography
This is a photographic project I made with Krystian Daszkowski.
The world certainly has more dimensions than those which are accessible to our everyday senses. It is not known whether they are the result of human imagination or reality. We also do not know whether reality does not come from imagination — from the mind. This visual story touches upon the supernatural events, which carry the deepest emotions, related to, among other, loss, desire, and sometimes are an outlet for fear or longing, which were experienced by certain people.
This work consists of photographs and videos documenting the essence of these experiences and archival photographs-objects that become somehow a portal in time, entangled in a new context. The background of the stories is the representation of the various beliefs and symbols that help us to put it nicely — live. They relate to disease prevention, attract fertility, or alert to danger. Due to the subject matter of this work, it is an extremely subjective reportage.
What inspires you as an artist? The diversity found among people and other species, along with the intricate complexities of their life stories and interconnections.
What do you think is the purpose of art? I believe art has the potential to be wide open and inclusive, and address essential issues for shared well-being. I believe that by creating collaborative multidimensional narratives, art provokes further reflection, which can lead to actions and changes.
Contacts
Email: [email protected] | www.katarzynawasowska.com | Instagram