2021 VISUAL ARTS



http://ALEKSANDRA BĘDZIŃSKA - Identity outsourcing

" Throughout the visual arts course, I was able to explore multiple facets of the art world. During my research, I was faced with the issue of constant not-knowing and being unsure - of topics I want to explore, of media I am interested in, and most importantly of what felt authentic to me. The struggle of defining self is universal, and often lifelong. However, I found that there is comfort in outsourcing your identity, as we often do. We pick a part of our personality, an external object, or theme as a key concept to presenting ourselves to society. This makes us feel in control and serves as a foundation for having a certain sense of self. Through this exhibition, I would like to explore this idea and showcase the variety of external factors that we choose to base our presence on, as well as ask the question of whether it is possible to compress a whole identity into one, presentable aspect of it. I decided to base my work on personal experience and the people present in my life - on the way I see them as they presented themselves to me, and the way they see themselves, and how they identify their own key to self."

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"The topic of my exhibition involves the widely interpreted creation of expectations and their influence on our lives. The expectations we set for ourselves, the ones others have for us, the ones the society presses on every single person in the world- they are all pretty destructive. As I want to show in my exhibition, expectations, especially if set too high, only have a detrimental effect on us. The exhibition is supposed to make you slightly uncomfortable. Sometimes you will feel like an intrude, sometimes like a really close friend although we are strangers. If the exhibition took place at school, that feeling of intrusion would be emphasized by the display of the artworks- each artwork was meant to have its own "tent," separating it from others."

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"My exhibition is an exploration of a spectrum of emotions through touch. Liking writing, I have always found myself naturally drawn to expressing my feelings with words. It was only the current situation and the necessary limiting of contact with others that made me more aware of the physical aspect of expression. Gentle, loving, defensive, violent; I grew sensitive to the complexity of the language of gestures and the meaning of touch. I thought a lot about what these meant to me and about what they may mean to others.  Arranged in the chronological order, the exhibition presents the viewer with a documentation of my exploration of these various meanings. Care was put to make the progression of my personal journey towards increased awareness of the richness of the physical experience clear to the viewer. The gradual reveal of the complex nature of touch is highlighted by the steadily changing tone and the addition of color to subsequent pieces. Beginning with the cool toned, black and white Loneliness and ending with the warm-colored Unitedness, the exhibition should guide the viewer along the path of discovery."

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"The title of my exhibition, Post-truth, refers to the phenomenon of the way modern public figures, especially politicians, as well as media, tend to focus on emotion during public debate, while omitting meritorical aspect of the matter discussed. It is a term encapsulating quite a frightening perspective on future politics, in which the appeal of truth through emotional and irrational lens is more important than the pursuit of truth itself, which in turn paves the way for propaganda, unmoderated spread of lies and fake news, and general informational chaos. In this exhibition I hope to raise awareness about this issue, as in my opinion it is a very alarming and important phenomenon, especially now in the twenty-first century, when we are equipped with vast communicational tools.Themes that I intended to convey in my piece contain themselves primarily within topics of communication, information and interpretation of information."

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"The title of my exhibition disintegration in the face of suffering tries to deal with how the body experiences suffering that exceeds its boundaries, but also how we can show through its structure the many dimensions of a feeling so complex and multifaceted. All of the pieces emerged from my exploration of the ways we perceive others in their suffering, and how we process our own. While suffering is a topic much exhausted by Western art, I believe that searching for my own way to deal with the way it mesmerizes and repels, the way it retracts to our interiors and usurps our beings, the way it hides and ejects, holds a value. The exhibition shows the journey to extricate the metaphysical from the physical by using the latter to show the first. I hope a person confronted with it engages with the portrayals and finds a way to consciously reflect on the unity of suffering as a human condition, but also emancipates from its traditional portrayals, searching for their own understanding of the way their body inholds that which they feel."

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