<p>Joanna Piotrowska's uncomfortable album, a series of staged family shots, insists upon the fundamental anxiety at the heart of the family: its system of relationships, adamantine bonds that are equally oppressive and rewarding. Her images display intimate family scenes - cosily paired bodies, meeting and converging, in images which teeter on the verge of a dysfunctional moment. In one snapshot, two adult brothers lie together on a Persian carpet wearing only white briefs; in another, the black-clothed bodies of two embracing women merge, suggesting the atavistic overlap of mother and daughter. The title itself, which denotes a warm or stuffy atmosphere, captures the paradoxical nature of the family: frowsty spaces are both cosy and claustrophobic, intimate and airless. The images are carefully staged: Piotrowska asked her family subjects to pose in almost sculptural gestures, re-enacting moments of intimacy - repeating spontaneous instants of tenderness, in performances which are imbued with a plethora of new meanings. Influenced by the philosophy of the German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger, Piotrowska integrated movements and gestures from Hellinger's therapeutic method Family Constellations, which attempts to expose and heal multi-generational trauma. Her black-and-white images, intentionally nostalgic for lost moment of happiness, are shrewd observations of the tension of self that pervades every family dynamic. Joanna Piotrowska is a Polish photographer who recently completed her MA at Royal College of Art, London. She has exhibited her work internationally in Ireland, Spain, Poland, Russia, France, Latvia and in the UK. Works from FROWST have been included in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2013, and in the exhibition 'Jerwood Encounters: Family Politics', curated by Photoworks.</p>

FROWST

Joanna Piotrowska

MACK BOOKS

<p>The themes of protection, freedom and oppression appear consistently throughout Polish artist Joanna Piotrowska’s oeuvre. Through three photographic series, Stable Vices focuses on these notions to crystallise a spectrum of concerns that drive her work. One series is inspired by illustrated self-defence manuals and Psychology and Resistance by the feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan. Piotrowska appropriates the formulaic step-by-step approach of the manuals but instead of showing two people in contact, she photographs the (re-) actions of one woman in conflict with an unknown, absent subject. While Gilligan argues in her book that teenage girls risk losing their voice in patriarchal societies, Piotrowska seeks to re-present their agency in corporeal form, and indicates – through the invisible opponent – the underlying pressures they have to confront. A second series reveals precarious shelters made out of furniture and blankets, situated in domestic spaces. Sculptural in form, these temporary refuges nod to the children’s game of making houses at home, as if domestic space would not provide enough protection. The constructions also reference the makeshift ‘homes’ of homeless people. In a third series, Piotrowska focuses on cages and comparable spaces created for humans, drawing parallels between the lives of certain communities and animals, and the environments in which they live</p>

STABLE VICES

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Books by Joanna Piotrowska

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Joanna Piotrowska. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

FROWST

STABLE VICES