Gosia Kępa | I always hear the river close by

Gosia Kępa | I always hear the river close by

Opening: 14.11, 18:00
Duration of exhibition: 14-24.11.2024 
Gallery Szewska 16

I always hear the river close by

As part of my diploma project, I look at the river and become convinced that flowing water is for me the best metaphor for transience, and change is the only constant. The titular river reveals its presence in many ways. At the same time, it becomes the main character of the project and its co-creator. The work is the result of my research on the record of existence. It results from a personal fear of change and loss. In cooperation with three rivers: Bystrzyca, Odra and Białka, I analyze different types of duration. Notation plays a very important role here. I notice it, among other things, in an image taken from the surface of an oxbow lake using a material, or in a direct recording made by an outcrop. I compare a personal record of a short existence (a fragment of the umbilical cord) with the existence of the Earth (clay collected at the source). The project is an attempt to come to terms with the passing of time. With the help of the river, I talk about personal solastalgia, which concerns longing for loved ones who have just passed away. And just as the life of a river is based on being everywhere, I believe that the supportive presence of my loved ones will manifest itself in many forms, even after their death.

Gosia Kępa (1997)

She comes from Świdnica in Lower Silesia. Photographer, visual artist, graduate of Social Psychology at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, as well as Photography at Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts Poznan.

She works in the field of various media – including: photography, object, drawing or performance. She is interested in broadly understood relationality. Deals with issues related to identity and coexistence. She is moved by nature and has a weakness for finding delights in organic forms. For her, photography is primarily a tool for meeting other people.

She is good at organizing meetings around art. She conducted workshops on analog photography techniques (such as cyanotype or antotype), an open photography workshop, and a meeting around soil. In 2022, she participated in an artistic residency in Vistula with the Flow collective, and since then she has been passionately exploring aquatic themes. She spent the winter semester of 2023 on exchange in Portugal, at the University of Lisbon, where she researched the topic of land and ocean. As part of her diploma project, she analyzed different types of duration in cooperation with three rivers. She is currently on an artist residency at the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, where she is looking at the earth and examining the pigment potential of soil materials.