The Special Award of the Rector of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin

 

Agata Derda  | Canada

 

Alter

Trophy

 

linocut, digital print, chine-collé | 2018 | 112 x 76,5 cm

 

Alter and Trophy belong to a larger series of works that focus on representations of self-imposed social misery and the dark side of the contemporary human condition. My works represent post-apocalyptic visions of a modern human world whose ‘glory’ days are past. Crippled trees or structures denote signs of human intervention, metaphoric representations of individual or societal actions. Alter alludes to a crucifix, suggesting the altering and/or crippling impact of religious indoctrination. Trophy addresses cultural traditions of self-inflicted annihilation, or the human tendency to subjugate the vulnerable in favour of the normalization and glorification of violence. 

 

The specific printmaking techniques employed are linocut and digital printmaking. The documentary aspect of photography helps to objectify an image. It is, after all, evidence of something that existed in real space and in real time, recorded through the unbiased aperture of a camera lens.  However, the hand-made graphic marks of a linocut contain visual semantics of an altered or abstracted reality, and therefore infer the subjective and personal. The combinations of these two techniques create a unique type of space that may be inhabited by the viewers’ imagination, thereby facilitating a completely original experience.