The Children of Sławoszyno

A child is a parchment tightly inscribed with tiny hieroglyphs, of which only some you will be able to read

— Janusz Korczak

This exhibition presents In the Footsteps of Malczewski, a formative photographic series by Teresa Gierzyńska, created in the summer of 1976 in the Kashubian village of Sławoszyno. Composed of vintage prints hand-tinted with aniline pigment, the series offers an early glimpse into the artist’s lasting engagement with the photographic surface as a space for emotional modulation and transformation. Inspired by the symbolism of Jacek Malczewski, Gierzyńska’s photographs of children from Sławoszyno create a dreamlike atmosphere that hovers between observation and imagination.

Teresa Gierzyńska was born in 1947 in Rypin, Poland. In 1964—65 she went for an educational art trip to Canada. In 1965—1971, she studied at the Department of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in prof. Tadeusz Łodziana’s sculpture studio and prof. Oskar Hansen’s Solids and Planes design studio. Since the late 1960s, photograph and its duplication techniques such as thermocopy or photocopy have become the main tool for the artist's exploration of the representation of women and their role marked by society. Her most known cycle About Herproposes an investigation or introspection within the female identity, the mystical version of feminism, where the photographs are accompanied by adjectives —meaningful titles given to the pictures: Dangerous, Independent, Unapproachable, Mature, Cold, Worried, Thirty Years Old, Useless, Left-handed, Velvety, Caresses, Full of Hope. She lives and works in Warsaw.