For three years she visited her family home, which was affected by her father’s alcoholism. An exhibition was created

Michalina Kacperak is a photographer and visual artist. She graduated with a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Wrocław and is a student of the National Film School in Łódź, majoring in Photography. The most important part of her work is devoted to personal, multi-layered stories touching on topics related to childhood, memory and exclusion.

“Here, no one is who they should be. Children have grown up too early, and adults are still children,” we read in the description of the “Soft Spot” exhibition. The photos introduce the viewer to the world of contradictions and contrasts of life in a family affected by the author’s father’s alcoholism and the co-dependence of her relatives. The artist visited her family home for three years, where she took photos in the room of her youngest sister, Zosia.

Initially, she focused on objects, and later also on household members, interacting with each of them differently. Together with Zosia, they played, explored and transformed a small room in which the photographer found visual metaphors of childhood memories. The resulting images are traces of returning home and finally leaving it. “Soft Spot” is a story about a painful lesson in tenderness and the healing process, an attempt to connect with the inner child through play. You can find more photos in the gallery next to the article.

Photo from the Soft Spot exhibition Michalina Kacperak/fotofestiwal promotional materials

What else at Fotofestiwal?

This year’s Fotofestiwal takes place on June 13-23 in Łódź, and this year’s edition will be held under the slogan Transformation and liberation. The event will feature nearly thirty exhibitions and dozens of accompanying events. In many cases, especially international exhibitions, Fotofestiwal will be the only opportunity to see these projects in Poland. We present several such works.

– We always try not only to show photos and present the interesting personalities of their creators, but also to think about why we need photography. This year, we are looking at many personal stories of artists for whom photography has become a way to deal with difficult emotions and experiences – says Marta Szymańska from the Fotofestival program board.

– But we are also looking for less personal works in which artists use images to talk about the processes of transformation and liberation from stagnant patterns and structures, such as, among others, patriarchy or religion. Liberation is the keynote that unites six individual exhibitions by international artists, presented in the main festival center – explains Krzysztof Candrowicz from the program board.

Four premieres by Polish artists

Weronika Gęsicka (Polityka’s Passport 2020), a visual artist, will show her latest works. With the project “ENCYCLOPAEDIA”, she will talk about cases when non-existent phenomena and people gained global fame as a result of errors and fictitious entries in encyclopedias and lexicons. Gęsicka created the project based on stock photos and artificial intelligence tools. He will show them at the Re:medium Gallery in cooperation with the Jednostka Gallery in Warsaw.

Przemek Dzienis, an artist known for conceptual photography and directing Fryderyk award-winning music videos, including: Krzysztof Zalewski and Brodka, will prepare their first artistic project for Fotofestiwal after a break of over seven years. “Good Regret” is a perverse reflection on passing memories. The artist transforms memory notes into images, and then into objects with disturbing structures, surprisingly organic shapes, and distorted sounds. Sculptures, photos and audiovisual installations will be shown in the unique interiors of the Hilary Majewski Tenement House, the newest art institution in Łódź.

Magda Hueckel – visual artist, director and photographer of the Polish theater scene, in collages created on the basis of photos from photographic archives and newspapers, will take part in the discussion about the representation of the female body in our culture, and the culmination of the 13-year-long work of Grzrgorz Wełnicki (Rats Agency, APP) with the topic of death will be his individual exhibition in the Film School gallery. The full program can be found at www.fotofestiwal.com and on social media.