digital photographs transferred to diapositives (2020-2021), video 6’10’’, sound (2023)
dimensions variable
The photographs presented in the exhibition had been taken between 2020 and 2021. They reflect daily life during the pandemic. Some of the spaces photographed belonged to people close to me, others were completely foreign (like a hotel room). The installation consists of transforming living spaces (a bedroom, a living room, etc.) into a camera obscura, all of which have at least one window providing natural light allowing the projection of the image from the outside.
Inside the space of the camera obscura, when confined in darkness, detached from the outside world and its stimuli, our vision can operate differently: without the natural and habitual intervention of our brain which distorts the images recorded on the retina to interpret them. The spectator then finds themselves between two worlds, that of the interior and that of the exterior. These are worlds where one can either observe or be observed (which was a common occurrence during periods of confinement during the pandemic).
The superposition of the exterior onto the interior creates a distance; the decoration of a room turns into its own background, thus becoming alien. Using this technique, we can explore otherwise inaccessible places and find ourselves here and there at the same time. The installation repeats a certain paradigm of perception, representative of contemporary society, where social experience is intimately linked to technology.
Finally, by rotating my shots 180 degrees, what is outside the camera obscura, behind the window, takes the foreground rather than the interiors themselves. Optical subversion also functions here as a metaphor for an “inverted” reality, in which the domestic environment becomes both a space for experimentation and virtual encounters.
The video entitled ‘After’ acts as a homage to the 1970-90s video art piece ‘From my window’ by Polish artist Józef Robakowski. The main difference if of course, the timing – I’ve realised the video in 2023, so 24 years after Robakowski, and 3 years after completion of the photographic part of the project, which is intended to contrast the daily life during and after the pandemic. In the video, the camera, both static and hand-held, follows the ebb and flow of everyday life: people walking, talking, eating ice cream, playing knife and scissor, or biking. The filming took place during a few months of routine observations from my flat’s balcony (the same flat which acted as starting point for the photo series). At the first glance, nothing that happens in the video suggests the COVID-19 pandemic ever happened, and the sunny months during the filming period bring out a sense of carefree time off (from work, school). Yet, the distance among the people walking is noticeable; there is a sense of something happening in the air. As if though the pandemic is kind of over, the habit of keeping distance is still there.