#ROSA: MAMA # 25 | ANETĄ GRZESZYKOWSKĄ
A small hand delicately touches what looks like a human face but which, at a closer look, turns out to be a sculptural reproduction: Mama # 25 stages a disturbing mother-daughter relationship, declined in a series of 25 photographic prints. Grzeszykowska’s practice has an essential characteristic in self-representation, experimented with either video, photography, digital practices or sculpture. Each series of works is completed and autonomous but at the same time it is the origin for new works.
Mama (2018) was born, following this research approach, from an encounter: the artist’s daughter with some works depicting her mother. The little girl touches and explores what appears to be the familiar body, figure, face, and Grzeszykowska records this subverted and unbalanced relationship. The body of the mother / artist is objectified, depersonalized, but it remains the fulcrum of the child’s attentions and intimate and daily gestures: making up the face, caressing or searching for the gaze. The mother-daughter relationship is subverted, the acting subject is that of the little girl who relates to a mother transformed into an inert hyper-realistic doll.
The alienating feeling of the imbalance of this physical but not equally vital relationship is exhibited and told by entrusting the leading role to those who, in the canons of maternal care, should receive care and attention, not administer it.
Each photograph is like the frame of a video sequence, a cycle that originates from its conclusion, like a cinematic loop. The evolution of the sequence summarizes the cycle of life, the passage from childhood to adulthood of the daughter and from adulthood to the mother’s old age, explicitly and symbolically concluded with the burial of the mother-bust in the garden.
With a refined and implacable register at the same time, Grzeszykowska forces us to look and look into the intimacy of our life and our memories, between stereotypes, cultural heritage and emotional thrust.
Aneta Grzeszykowska
Mama # 25;
Collection Adrian Slupski (CAS collection)
From Mama series, 2018
20 photographs
All works with the additional support of Raster Gallery, Warsaw
59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams
© photo Marco Cappelletti, Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia
02/07/2022
Anetą Grzeszykowską, Mama Series, 2018, © photo Marco Cappelletti, Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia