Patrycja Orzechowska

During her residence at POLIN Museum, Patrycja Orzechowska produced a unique publication comprising images of donations from the Museum collection, perpetuated in a particular way. The objects selected by the artist together with the POLIN Museum Collections Department—personal keepsakes and histories—were exposed directly on a photosensitive material. Her work is not merely a revealing insight into multi-generational histories hidden in these objects; it also serves as an analysis of social memory which encourages critical approach. While dealing with the objects collected by the Museum, she followed the difficult Polish-Jewish history which has been materialized in these objects. The artist is interested in the manner in which this particular collection was created and what multigenerational stories it has in store. However, she pays more attention to the collection’s role and significance for contemporary audience. Each vestige of presence is equally important here. Each item used to have an owner, and bore witness to a life: an iron, a tie, an embroidered tablecloth, “a Gypsy doll,” a signet ring of a death camp prisoner or ceramic tiles from the Praga synagogue and a private apartment on Orla Street… The artist is looking at these objects anew, exposing some of them on a photosensitive material and preserving them with the use of a non-camera photographic image. The artist thus refers to the initial associations related to the discovery of analogue photography and the ambience which accompanied this very discovery—the phantom-like process of photographing. By dealing with objects—through the use of photography—she evokes their history. She thus becomes a medium of sorts, an intermediary between the past and the present. The outcome of Patrycja Orzechowska’s residence is an artbook with photograms of objects and the essay penned by Tomasz Szerszeń and Andrzej Marzec¹.