Katarzyna Wąsowska (b. Gdańsk, 1990) is a photographer, gardener and social activist based in Poznań, Poland. Graduated with an MA diploma in Photography from the University of the Arts in Poznań, she is currently an Anthropology student at Adam Mickiewicz University and Autonomic University in Barcelona. This year’s recipient of the Wielkopolska Marshal’s Scholarship, as part of which she is carrying out a series “Allotmentists” about allotment gardens as the cradle of organic gardening and zero waste culture. Her art practice juggles between subjective, unreal creation photography and documentary. She builds stories about specific places or certain communities by referring to scientific and para-scientific literature and basing her research on archives and interviews.
Currently, she investigates the themes related to gardening, plants, migration and inclusion in the context of climate change.
ATLANTIDOLOGY
2016
The issue of Atlantida’s existence with it’s highly developed civilization has been stimulating human imagination for about two and a half thousand years thus far. Both for laymen and for scientists it has been seemingly an unsolvable riddle, causing never-ending disputes. The quest for any answer required broad knowledge and comprehensive research in the field of history, geology and astronomy. It turns out, that since the last few years (2500 years) all the ways to find Atlantis were wailing, because they were simply too complicated and too systemic. Tired of following this unsuccessful investigation, of too many scientists I have decided to take matters into my own hands, and as I have found myself in the islands of western grup of Azores archipelago I didn’t have to wait long for the answers. It turns out that Atlantis hasn’t been wiped out by a cosmic catastrophe and it has been flooded by the waters of great ocean only a bit. The research I have conducted on the land of Atlantis proves that it still exist because my thesis has been confirmed by its settlers. I was really surprised by the fast effect of my investigation, and also It pushed me to realize the absurdity of contemporary scientists’ and their understanding of the term „developed civilization” from couple thousands years ago. How insane it seems to spend so much energy on searching something that is not even correctly defined, because exists not physical but as an idea, which is placed in the middle of the great ocean.
But all the hardships behind us, the evidence is not redoubtable – Atlantis is found, and it seems that life there seems just fine.
IT SO HAPPENS THAT THE WORLD IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS
In collaboration with Krystian Daszkowski.
2017
The world certainly has more dimensions than those which are accessible to our everyday senses. It is not known whether they are the result of human imagination or reality. We also do not know whether reality does not come from imagination — from the mind. This visual story touches upon the supernatural events, which carry the deepest emotions, related to, among other, loss, desire, and sometimes are an outlet for fear or longing, which were experienced by certain people.
This work consists of photographs and videos documenting the essence of these experiences and archival photographs-objects that become somehow a portal in time, entangled in a new context. The background of the stories is the representation of the various beliefs and symbols that help us to put it nicely — live. They relate to disease prevention, attract fertility, or alert to danger.
Due to the subject matter of this work, it is an extremely subjective reportage.
Waiting for the snow
made together with Marianne Wasowska
Have a virtual visit to the exhibition of this project at the Museum of Emigration in Gdynia.
“Waiting for the Snow” is a photographic project presenting the curious phenomenon of Polish migration to the South American countries during the partitions (19th century) and the interwar period. We focus on the Brazilian and Argentinean directions of migration, as these countries were the most popular destinations of migrants, and the number of people of Polish origin living there is currently the highest on that continent (Brazil 1.53 million, Argentina 120-450 thousand). Both these countries were also at that time perceived by migrants as unknown and exotic. We want to shed some light on this little-known (and rather untypical) aspect of European presence in that remote part of the world. The colonization pursued by Central European countries took the form of an advertising campaign. It aimed to occupy large areas of land to draw not state, but individual benefits, pretending that this land was not inhabited by native populations. The increased migration to Brazil was also related to the lack of workforce that the country experienced after the abolition of slavery and the implementation of the government project of making Brazil “white”. In Argentina, the plan was mainly based on the idea that only European workers could build a modern dream society. This migration policy strongly influenced the way migrants defined themselves and created relationships with the new land, which is particularly important because most of them were farmers. The Polish descendants of those emigrants are now (after about 100-150 years) still actively cultivating the traditions and language of their ancestors. Using our own photos, archival documents, and family albums, we want to create a multi-layered visual story. On the one hand, we gather stories based on the collective memory of the Polish community about the country of origin and the beginnings of settlement in the new homeland. On the other hand, we focus on the creolization and mixing of cultures and observe how the Slavic background has interlaced with the South American context, creating a concept of identity based on reconstruction, fiction, and fantasy.
