The loss of a loved one became the starting point for Wełnicki’s spiritual and creative work with the subject of death. This process took 13 years.
During this time, the artist held meetings with people who temporarily avoided death and it marked their lives, and with those who already know when their end will come. He documented the work of dissecting rooms and modern ways of storing bodies, the activities of companies engaged in thanatoplasty or cryogenics, and the directions of transhumanism in the struggle to overcome the limitations of the human body. He visited Varanasi in India and photographed the so-called “untouchables” – people designated to burn corpses and socially stigmatized by their function. He has worked on the subject in Poland, Ukraine and Russia.
As a member of the Institute of Good Death, the artist is active in promoting conscious and open talk about the passing of time, and with the exhibition at the Film School he summarizes and closes a chapter of his work in this area. This will be the first cross-sectional exhibition of all of Wełnicki’s projects created around the question of what lessons death brings.
The photographs presented in the exhibition may be disturbing to the viewer. The exhibition is intended for adults or with parental consent.
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Grzegorz Wełnicki
The photo of Josephine – a woman from Philippines suffering from a rare skin disease – in the costume of Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl” appeared in 2013 in “Wysokie Obcasy” (High Heels) and remains one of the most memorable Polish magazine covers to this day. Other photographs from the expedition to the Philippines were published with Wojciech Tochman’s text in the book “Eli, Eli” (published by Czarne), and Wełnicki has many more magazine covers to his credit, working with Rats Agency and the Public Protest Archive (the group was nominated for the Polityka Passports).
He has devoted much of his artistic work to the subject of death. Some of this projects have been shown at festivals such as Photo Is:rael and Verzasca Foto Festival in Switzerland. The No’am exhibition at the Lodz Fotofestiwal will be the premiere of many of the photos and the culmination of much of the artist’s work with this theme.
Wełnicki’s works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Pauza Gallery in Krakow, among others, and have also appeared in: “British Journal of Photography”, “Frieze Magazine”, “Life Framer”, “Szum Magazine”, “DOC! Photo Magazine,” and “GUP Magazine.”
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Curator: Ewa Ciechanowska
Visual artist, curator, and professor in the Department of Photography at PWSFTviT. Her works have been presented at international festivals such as the CiClo Photography Biennale in Porto 2019 and the Triennial of Photography in Hamburg 2018. She has curated exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including Karassy i Granfalony at Fotofestiwal 2022, Waste Index at the Hamburg Triennial 2015, Darkroom, Flow, Volumes and other birds at Fotofestiwal (2018, 2015, 2014), and Future Condition in Cologne 2014. She has served as a juror for international photography competitions, including the BarTur Photo Award in 2021 and 2022.
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Szklarnia Gallery, Lodz Film School, Targowa 61/63
DID YOU KNOW that the Leon Schiller National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź is the oldest film school in Poland and one of the oldest in the world?
Its first academic year was inaugurated in 1948. Outstanding directors began their studies at the time: Andrzej Munk, Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polański, Janusz Morgenstern, Kazimierz Kutz and Kazimierz Karabasz. There were also prominent directors of photography: Jerzy Wójcik, Witold Sobociński, Mieczysław Jahoda, and Wiesław Zdort. The School’s main office building on Targowa (Market Street) has a legendary staircase on which famous students would often sit and chat (and from which they used to jump). In fact, an impressive number of renowned film artists are the School’s graduates! To this day, it is one of the most important places on the map of Łódź.
