Tension
2022, photograph, 42 x 30 cm
Technical collaboration: Małgorzata Kujda
Ethnographic Museum, a branch of the National Museum in Wrocław
„We come to one of the key characteristics of evil: it is ambiguous. This is one of the reasons why evil cannot be eradicated. Just as good cannot be eradicated. For it too is ambiguous. And ambiguous situations cling particularly strongly to existence. (…) Whichever angle we approach moral issues from, we must prune life. It does not fit.”
Jolanta Brach-Czaina ‘The Cracks in Existence’
The photograph depicts a hand turned towards the viewer in a gesture of peace. At the same time, it forms part of a primitive weapon – a sling. My formal point of reference was the exhibits at the Ethnographic Museum in Wrocław – the so-called ‘self-born forms’ – natural elements of the environment – adapted by humans and subjected to minimal processing to meet their needs. I was particularly drawn to those shaped like the letter ‘Y’. The museum displays man-made artefacts that bear witness to the region’s cultural richness. I wonder what we might learn about it if we could see and meticulously catalogue what man has destroyed, what is no longer there?
