Joanna Piotrowska

Untitled

This photograph taken in 2015 is part of the series, which focuses on Piotrowska’s long-term preoccupation with issues of domesticity and containment. The images depict young isolated women in domestic environments, holding various unnatural postures: we see a hand raised to a face, as if in a trance; limbs precariously balanced or ambiguously entangled, contorted against an unseen adversary. It is unclear whether gestures are benign or threatening, whether these women are menacing or being menaced.

These photographs are inspired by illustrated self-defense manuals and the work of feminist and 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. Gilligan’s research for its part revealed a tendency in adolescent girls to silence their inner voice to comply with the structures of patriarchal society, Piotrowska seeks to (re)present their agency in corporeal form, and depicts – through the invisible opponent – the underlying pressures they have to confront.