FROWST by Joanna Piotrowska
A collection of works by Polish artist Joanna Piotrowska.
Joanna Piotrowska's Strange Family Album is a staged family photograph that asserts an underlying anxiety in the idea of family: the inseparable bonds that are both oppressive and rewarding. Her photographs present intimate family scenes. Elegantly paired bodies meet and converge in images that seem on the brink of dysfunction. In one snapshot, two adult brothers lie on a Persian rug in only white briefs, while in another, the black-clad bodies of two embracing women merge, suggesting a hideous overlap of mother and daughter. The very title, which connotes warmth and suffocation, captures the paradoxical nature of family. The frowning spaces are both cozy and claustrophobic, intimate and airless. Piotrowska poses her family subjects with almost sculptural gestures, recreating moments of intimacy. Influenced by the philosophy of German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger, Piotrowska integrates the movements and gestures of Hellinger's therapeutic practice, "Family Constellations." Her black and white images are deliberately nostalgic reflections of moments of lost happiness and sharp observations of the inner tensions that pervade all family relationships.
"Every activity in relation to my father both develops and destroys me. I find my father everywhere. There is no landscape without a father." - Franz Kafka (Letter to His Father)
Winner of the 2014 MACK First Book Award. Out of print.
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Title: FROWST
Artist: Joanna Piotrowska
MACK, 2014
Hardcover, perfect binding
265 x 235 mm
48 pages
Text in English
First edition
ISBN: 978-1-910164-10-5
¥7,700 -
Condition: Good/Average condition for its age