If art can exist without memory, I do not remember it. But there are certain aesthetic memory devices more obvious than others. These are the mechanical arts – in Rancière’s words[1] -. cinema and photography. Nevertheless, unlike cinema with its particular storytelling, “photography is partial, allusive, fragmentary and is therefore memory’s quintessential visual medium”[2]. In turn, besides embodying these same qualities of photography, memory is also fictional and fleeting – it should be noted that the photographic image can also be so, although in a way that is foreign to its essence.

Joanna Piotrowska carries these conceptual properties of photography – and of memory – into her formal setting. This is immediately noticeable upon entering the gallery premises. A set of black and white photos stands out among the bright white walls of the exhibition venue, sending us back to a past where colours were absent from the aesthetic experience of family photography. Despite the artist having coexisted with the option of color photography throughout her childhood and youth, we readily understand that the choice to keep black and white is not an aesthetic one – exactly because of the memory burden of the other elements – but an evocation of a different time in the past, whatever it may be, with no intention of establishing a true time trail, thereby calling to mind the fiction and allusion with which memory is associated.

We soon encounter an unusual photo arrangement that runs through all the works in this show, profoundly influenced by layers and collages. Juxtaposed on a light fabric, positioned like a curtain, is a sequence of images of the same moment, revealing a blurred movement. As if, behind that curtain of time, obliterated by memory, there was something evident that remains blurred when recalling it. This is followed by some photographs in which a collage process can be perceived. Mouths and smiles are drawn over warm gestures – face clippings that are clearly retained in memory, amidst the glut of frivolous and blurred images that comprise the rest of our memory. Joanna Piotrowska once again explores the quirks of memory (and photography), this time through its fragmentary, partial and, therefore, selective power.

There is indeed an emotional cluster that envelops the whole exhibition: gestures of kindness, complicity and intimacy materialize between faces and hands that draw us both to the importance of touch within memory – something that survives both in imagined (in the sense of depicting and creating images) and embodied gestures[3] – and to the significance of the gesture as a vital element of the photographic apparatus. Likewise, the intimacy portrayed (or reproduced) in these photographs leads us back to a familiar, intimate and domestic ambience, where we can see ourselves in the presence and absence of the bodies occupying them. There is a sense of belonging, as well as a sense of loss – as hinted by the cut-out silhouette of one photo, where only the hands remain, again emphasising their impact on memory, photography and affections through gestures and touching.

It should be mentioned the unique nature of the supporting materials, which do not go unnoticed, quite the contrary – sometimes they take on such a proportion that they overwhelm their purpose and are as central to the work as the photograph they support. Most of the photographs are framed between boards that replicate the standard floorboards found in the houses of one particular generation. In other words, the supports are also responsible for the memory looming in the surrounding atmosphere. On the gallery’s final wall, two small cut-out smiles stuck to the very edges of another cloth, brought together by scribblings, fill the rest of the support, which ceases to be seen as such. Sara de Chiara tells us on the dense exhibition text that these doodles were curated and transferred to the tapestry by the artist, from a range of childhood drawings made by herself, her sister and cousins. Amid the innocent smiles and sketches, the artist offers us a memoir of and through childhood. A memory which is often as wayward as the very doodles that make up the work. Finally, Joanna Piotrowska has not neglected the distinctive floral fabrics that once wove tablecloths, curtains or even dresses, in another synchronistic period of her childhood and youth, bringing them into one of the frames – like a person who never forgets anything!

As a last point, these are not archive images, they are actual photographs. The memory element is instilled in them and constructed on what is possible, in the present, so as to elicit implicit memories. Nevertheless, as Rancière rightly clarifies: “the real, to be truly understood and thought about, must be fictionalized”[4].

Joanna Piotrowska’s Implicit Lives is at Galeria Madragoa until July 6, 2024.

[1] Rancière, Jacques. Distributions of the Sensible. Translated by Mônica Netto. São Paulo: EXO experimental org.; Editora 34, 2009 (2nd Edition).

[2] Sturken, Marita. “Memory, Consumerism and Media”. MEMORY STUDIES. London: Sage Publications. Vol 1 (1): 2008, p. 73.

[3] Cf. Viveiros de Castro, E. (2002). A Inconstância da Alma Selvagem e Outros Ensaios de Antropologia. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify.

[4] Rancière, Jacques. Distributions of the Sensible. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2009, p. 58.