Honorary Mention

 

Joanna Kaczor | Poland

 

The Mirror will Remember Nothing II

 

The Mirror will Remember Nothing III

 

The Mirror will Remember Nothing IV

 

The Mirror will Remember Nothing IX

 

etching, xero transfer | 2015-2016 | 100 x 70 cm

 

There is such a strange and incredibly appealing feeling when you go knee-deep into the sea at night. With closed eyes, it seems that the sea draws you in, it is hard to believe that you are standing still, so strong is the impression. That's why, at such a moment, someone must hold my hand. The matter of memories resembles the sea. Stories from the past come and go like waves hitting the shore. You have to take a step back to see the rhythm and the horizon line. Only when you are close you can see small wrinkles on the water and in order to see what is on the bottom you need to immerse. In contact with the sea the inner features of the man standing on its shore become visible. For a moment, nature is a mirror in which you cannot see yourself, but in which you can find yourself.

 

The prints were made with etching combined with the photocopying transfer. I could get rhythmic rows of signs much faster, but at this stage the hand work was the most valuable for me. Writing for many days on a metal plate covered in varnish resembled a kind of meditation. Signs, although they have the look of letters, do not form any words, being as intuitive as possible, and having at the same time the rhythm of the sea and the form of memories. For the transfer of family photographs I chose photocopying directly on graphic paper so that it would not be possible to obtain two identical prints. The whole cycle consists of 16 prints etched from five matrices, which through different manners of printing create different results. The matrix is only a starting point and a large part of the story is created in the process of printing. And it is a story that, like in real life – always sounds a little bit different.