For Art Basel Miami, Madragoa is delighted to present a solo presentation of Joanna Piotrowska (1985, Warsaw), composed by new photographs that continue her research on familial relationships through the staging of gestures of closeness. The presentation is punctuated by a textile installation specially designed by the artist.

Joanna Piotrowska explores the complexities of human relationships through analogue photography, performance, and film. Her work challenges conventional narratives of family and domesticity, revealing power dynamics and psychological tensions within this sphere. Through stylized imagery and a performative approach, Piotrowska prompts viewers to reassess ingrained assumptions about family, home, and societal structures, inviting contemplation on the intricate interplay between human behavior and its socio-political context.

The series “FROWST” (2014-today) emerges as a Proustian exploration of memory and familial dynamics, encapsulating the essence of a Polish winter’s room— “frowst” meaning suffocation, mustiness, brings to mind the dense air of an unaired apartment, saturated with complicated family relationships. Thus, it takes on dual roles, embodying both adjective and noun, symbolizing not only physical stuffiness but also emotional claustrophobia. Within this conceptual framework, Piotrowska orchestrates staged scenarios, reminiscent of childhood coziness intertwined with visual and emotional confinement, whose social coding the viewer cannot clearly decode.

Drawing inspiration from Bert Hellinger’s theories on family constellations, Piotrowska meticulously reconstructs interpersonal dynamics within domestic environments. Informed by therapeutic methods, her photographs capture moments of warmth, closeness, and support, yet imbue them with a subtle undercurrent of anxiety and ambiguity. The images oscillate between closeness and threat, freedom and oppression, protection and danger. They examine gestures and behavior, question social norms, and explore interpersonal relationships. However, the purpose of this is not to create a real representation of concretely delineated psychosocial states, but instead to evoke fragments of associations of human states that oscillate in an intermediate space of contradiction.

The presentation of Piotrowska’s works invites viewers into an immersive exploration of familial dynamics and domesticity. A selection of photographs adorn the walls, each capturing moments of intimacy and ambiguity within staged domestic environments, echoing the series’ thematic exploration of familial relationships. Her reenactments of gestures in the family space function here as a mirror of society: potentially a site of tenderness but also of control, of emancipation but also oppression. A host of systems of domination come together to the point of shaping body movements and relationships. Captured on photographs, each of the gestures in her works are deliberately staged and directed, acting as documents of an intimate performance for the camera rather than documentary images. And while to describe her works as documentation of performances seems inaccurate – inasmuch as this suggests public acts resulting in documents that would be mere traces after the fact –, a performance of sorts is arguably at the heart of most of them.

Positioned at the heart of the booth is a double-sided printed textile, reminiscent of a curtain, opaque and evocative of the series’ themes of domesticity, suffocation and emotional confinement. This installation serves not only as a physical division within the space but also as a symbolic representation of the boundaries that shape familial spaces. As viewers navigate between the photographs and the curtain, they are invited to contemplate the nuances of human connection, oscillating between warmth and discomfort, affection and constraint.