No’am is a journey toward life, in which the awareness of death and transience deepens our understanding of reality. This project appears at exactly the right moment. It is the result of over a decade-long journey, in which Grzegorz Wełnicki, after the death of a close person, seeks answers to existential questions concerning the essence of our existence. The works selected for the exhibition come from projects in which death meets life. In the Eternal cycle, Wełnicki examines funeral rituals in Varanasi, in which outcasts annihilate bodies through cremation and the immersion of ashes in the waters of Ganges, which they believe leads to eternal peace and the soul’s liberation from the cycle of birth and death. In another work titled US, Wełnicki points to the the tension and polarization that emerges from between inevitable death and destruction of the body and the imperative of survival and the possibilities provided by biomedical engineering. Renaissance-like images of the body evoke the motto “mortui vivos docent,” “the dead teach the living” – a message popular at entrances to morgues and anatomical laboratories, which seek in the unavoidable stages of existence the possible sources of knowledge and development. The photographs that close the No’am project and construct its final form are lyrical and emotional portraits of the people who consciously touched the boundary between life and death due to illness, accident, or war.

No’am offers a mindful, multi-threaded, autobiographical story, in which the viewer may discover own connections and narratives by accompanying Wełnicki in his personal story. Following the Sartre’s idea that opens this exhibition, one is always in the process of becoming, never fully defined. The perceptual and emotional key to this journey is a reflection on the gist of presence, understood as a perpetual process of transformation.

www.grzegorzwelnicki.com

Exhibition curator: Ewa Ciechanowska www.ewaciechanowska.com

Exhibition OPENING:
15th June, at 7 p.m.,
Lodz Film School / Szklarnia Gallery
Lodz, Targowa Street 61/63, New Media Centre

Exhibition: from 15th June till 6th September
* during Fotofestival weekend:
15th June, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
16th June, 10:00 a.m. – 6:30 p.m
22nd-23rd June, 12:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m. 
* others days
Monday-Friday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

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More information on Fotofestival website: fotofestiwal.com/2024/en/