(…) Intimacy contained in Monika Wiechowska’s photos manifests itself not so much in relation to the viewer as to the space around; the public space the photos are intended for. And it is the dialogue between the private and the public spheres, their mutual relations are interdependence, that seem to provide a theme for the artists pursuit. She consciously uses a medium, which is characteristically heterogeneous in itself. On the one hand, she accompanies our individual lives, showing their bits and pieces in a myriad of photographs closed in albums, scrapbooks and wallets. On the other hand, she provides an all-powerful tool for economic and political manipulation. A carrier in interpersonal communication, she is at the same time a part of institutionalized systems of control over the individual.
The very division into private and public spheres is ambiguous. What we have agreed to consider as private zone become the object of public discussion, regulations and laws. The incessant surveillance of mass media, sneaking into all recesses of intimacy, is a derivative of this state. Mapping out the public space hardly evokes less controversy, not just because “pro publico bono” has become a more or less incomprehensible cliché.
The overlapping of the two spheres in Monika Wiechowska’s works does not merely result from a simple transfer of an artistic object created in the “private zone” to the “public space”. The inner analytical structure is as important as their location. The artists is analyzing a language which shapes the feeling of cultural identity with its codes and traits.
Characters and objects in Wiechowska’s photographs are trying to trace their lost identity in iconographic canons of the past. Carefully posed, they create peculiar tension, an anxiety about otherwise familiar images.
They have nothing in common with the characters created by Vermeer, Rembrandt or Man Ray: all that is left is the light coloring the photographic emulsion, a fleeting mood as delicate as sterile as herself. The are no paraboles or philosophical puzzles. The secrets of composition suggest the secrets of other compositions coded in collective consciousness. (…)
In the works created by Monika Wiechowska the Persian carpet does not take us to the realm of fairy-tale fantasies or sensual strokes of a Flemish brush. It lands in middle-class interiors of Amsterdam, Paris, Szczecin…A lone figure at an airport, contemplating Icelandic landscape, is unconsciously imitating still gestures from romantic paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. However, separated by a thick pane he does not establish symbolic relations, being just an observer like the person taking the shot.
Presence behind a lens is a particular type of loneliness. The inner exhibitionism that goes with it does not imply the search for objective truth – as it is not available – but sincerity. Sincerity in photography is a difficult notion, if not a perverse one.
The title of one of Wiechowska’s projects – “the Public Odyssey” – indicates the beginning of an artistic trip where everyone is the main, albeit doomed to anonymity hero. Exposing her privacy in a domain where everything (including privacy) is for sale, the artist is shifting the focus of attention from the work of art to a situation: esthetic, social or environmental. A single photograph functions as catalyst for thoughts, reflections and critical attitudes. It allows for the necessary distance to observe the territory which we call our everyday life.
We wander in this bizarre labyrinth changing the distances and relations, trying to adjust to it like Alice in Wonderland. The artist skillfully controls these changes. She eliminates the background noises making us get closer to small-frame photos, then again she overwhelms us with the scale of black-and-white prints which limit our field of vision like wallpaper or billboards. Our whole body, “being a thing among things and experiencing these things” , is a part of this process. It is reflected in the glistening surfaces, smoothly entering the space “on the other side of the mirror”. (…)
Translated from Polish into English by Marek Stelmaszczyk.
Proof read by Rick Butler.
Excerpts of text originally published in the catalogue for Monika Wiechowska’s individual show The Public Odyssey , at the Pomeranian Dukes Castle, Szczecin.
Joanna Hoffmann. Artists, curator and art critic based in Poznań, Poland.