Stable Vices by Joanna Piotrowska

A collection of works by Polish artist Joanna Piotrowska.

The themes of protection, freedom and oppression appear consistently in Joanna Piotrowska's work. Stable Vices focuses on these concepts through three photographic series, crystallizing the various concerns that drive her work. One series is inspired by feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan's illustrated self-defense manual, Psychology and Resistance. The artist appropriates the manual's formulaic step-by-step approach, but instead of photographing two people in contact, she photographs the (re)action of one woman in conflict with an unknown, absent object. While Gilligan argues in her book that teenage girls are at risk of losing their voice in a patriarchal society, Piotrowska seeks to re-present their subjectivity in physical form, showing through an invisible other the underlying pressures they must face. The second series is a series of precarious shelters made of furniture and blankets installed in domestic spaces. These temporary shelters, with their sculptural forms, recall the children's play of making homes in their homes, as if domestic spaces did not offer enough protection. They also reference the makeshift "houses" of the homeless. In a third series, the artist focuses on cages and comparable spaces made for humans, drawing parallels between certain communities and animal lives and the environments they inhabit.

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Title: Stable Vices
Artist: Joanna Piotrowska
MACK, 2021
Hardback with PVC jacket
215 x 170 mm
176 pages
Text in English
First edition, signed by the artist
ISBN 978-1-912339-39-6
¥9,020 -