Weronika Gęsicka: Marks

Marks are, by definition, traces or other indications of the existence or passing of something. Evidence of a presence. Confirmation of participation. Examples of such marks are photographs, which document the existence of people, situations, moments. They are like engrams that come about through certain stimuli and experiences.

This project is based on archival photographs purchased from an image bank. Family scenes, vacation souvenirs, everyday life. Suspended somewhere between truth and fiction. Hard to say if they are spontaneous or entirely staged. We do not know the real ties between the figures in the photographs; we can only suppose how much truth is in their gestures and gazes. Who are, or were, these people in the photographs? Are they actors playing happy families, or real people whose photographs were put up for sale by the image bank? Some are present; others vanish from the pictures, but they always leave a mark. These photographic testimonies cease to attest to the existence of a given moment; this is more of a question of how enduring these traces can be—and whether they engender some kind of result. We might wonder what it means to record a person’s presence, and to what degree this presence can be captured in a photograph or in the memory. These images, modified in various ways, are enveloped by new content; recollections of people and situations are transformed and gradually blur.

Curator: Agnieszka Rayss

Weronika Gęsicka (1984, Włocławek) graduated from the graphics department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the Academy of Photography in the same city. She won a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. She has won at the International Photography Awards, PX3, and Dolina Kreatywna competitions. Her projects address themes tied to memory and its mechanisms.