Maria Ciszewska
Internship: UDOMA JANSSEN
mariakniaginin@gmail.com, mariaciszewska.com, instagram.com/spicynutz
Together with my girlfriend, we act as characters whose scraps of everyday life serve as material for creating visual realities. To approach the theme of femininity being build on „traditional” values, and what’s mote — the fantasy of integrating (traditional values) into the emerging image of a polish lesbian. Of how I see myself and wish to be seen by others. My fantasy(s) is that perhaps we do not have to remove them all together, rather consider the why and the how some of these values need to be altered; to shift their connections to the homophobic aspect of the sociopolitical context, of Poland I live in. I wish to bring alternative visions, maybe postcards of the future, that one day might become a reality. That I can be lesbian and spend my honeymoon in a kitch hotel. I can be lesbian and visit my girlfriend’s grandma for dinner, I can go to the countryside (the ultimate center of polish values), and to have the lesbian stay. By using photography as a tool of connection and a choice, I invite you to join us in these moments that shed some light on how it is to be a lesbian couple in the most homophobic country in the EU. This is the fantasy we are building and want to stick on a postcard. Our small and big mysteries build on both joy and pain that are buried underneath the realm of the everyday.
“WHY THE REVOLUTION IS A WOMAN AND A HOME. ON COLLECTIVE AND PERSONAL PATRIARCHY.”
Thesis
With my thesis, I penetrate deep inside society and how women are preserved. On objectification of women, and stereotypes in which we sometimes find ourselves best. On feminism, which is for everyone but one that is flawed. The body of work is not only to share and shape mysteries of everyday life, indeed the history of women’s liberation that is still happening, but to expose—how much we still have to do. Me and you, and it is not just us two. Sometimes cold, sometimes warm, sometimes ironic observation of the world—from the past, the present, and maybe the future. Where women stood, where they stand, and maybe where they will be standing. It is a cruel bill of socio-cultural norms, and (all eyes on) us in society. All stories and experiences are personal, come from myself and women in my surroundings. All the situations took place, in the timeline of being a woman in today’s society—from the perspective of a different background, orientation, age, and skin color.This is not theory folder, and it was never intended to be. A broad collection of essays and prose, to process sexism, abuse, smash the patriarchy. To digest that we don’t have a choice. Yet, we have a choice in empathy, and (for me) it is a frustration that creates desire. Let it be a desire to follow harsh, bad, disgusting, abusive moments and her-stories. And this time to not let it go. To address a wide variety of topics, both cultural and personal, my interests circulate around the focus of intersectionality, capitalism, and gender. A theoretical framework for understanding how aspects of a person’s social and political identities combine to create unique modes of discrimination and privilege. Using cultural situations, my artistic practice, examples from critical art, individual stories, my motherland, I try to create an umbrella. Umbrella of emotions, women, variety of voices, that are focusing on catching what’s in between — the personal and collective patriarchy, something that might be uneasy to catch. Mixing the whole body of work with books, feminist thought and theories, to spice things up.
„As a nation, we need to gather our collective courage and face the society’s lovelessness is a wound. As we allow ourselves to acknowledge the pain of this wound when it pierces our flesh and we feel in the depths to our soul a profound anguish of spirit, we come face to face with the possibility of conversation, of having a change of heart.” bell hooks reminds us in last stances of the loves essay „All about love”, from 2000