Statement

a Lair

This is my childhood home. There live my eyes and spirits collected so scrupulously in the first years of my life. Going back, I return to adventures and riddles never solved. I'm still searching for answers. A guide to this world was my grandma. She led me to the woods, called mushroom, stones and roots by their names. Through the years, the inside of the house has been filled to the brim with objects she collected. Once she has brought something in, it remains with her forever. The house, together with her, grows old, everything there is subject to natural cycles.

Profile

Tomasz Kawecki

Tomasz Kawecki (1993)I am a second year student at ITF at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava(CZ). I co-create the Naga gallery. I am interested in anthropology, I believe in the agency of magical actions. My main medium is photography, but I extend my interest in art to performance, intermedia activities and sculpture.

Jury selection

In Tomasz Kawecki’s series, a Lair, there is a photograph that made me gasp. An elderly woman, presumably naked, reclines on a bed with snail shells covering her eyes. The swirl of the shells evokes a state of hypnosis or hallucination. The viewer becomes the dreamer with visions of anthropomorphic objects, dark forests and pond fires.
The fact that Kawecki’s photos were made with his grandmother in his childhood home makes his project all the more meaningful. It prompts me to reflect on the boundless mix of imagination and sensory discovery one feels during childhood. Kawecki’s pictures function like his grandmother’s talismans – as portals to expanded consciousness.

Links

• HP：https://www.tomaszkawecki.com/
  Instagram：@panremembrance
  Facebook：@tomasz.kawecki.94