The Double Life of Aneta Grzeszykowska
VAULT’s Duro Jovicic spoke with Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska ahead of her Australian premiere at Buxton Contemporary as part of the veil, where she presents a specially curated selection of fourteen works from her photographic series Mama, exhibited in Milk of Dreams; at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.
Image credit: Aneta Grzeszykowska, Mama nr. 45, 2018. Courtesy Raster Gallery, Lyles & King Gallery, the artist.
In contemporary art, women have increasingly been reimagined beyond traditional portrayals in domestic situations, as submissive lovers, or for the voyeuristic pleasure of the male gaze. Aneta Grzeszykowska delves into how women are perceived, as reflected in her intensely personal portrayals of gendered roles, in both moving and still images, both in front of and behind the camera. She often elicits a mixture of surrealism, discomfort, and foreboding. Her affecting series Mama (2018), featured in the 2022 Venice Biennale, showcases the tumult typical of her work. Taking a subversive approach to familial relationships and the role of women, Mama offers an enticing perspective into Grzeszykowska’s oeuvre.
Aneta, your series, Mama (2018), feels like an act of subversive role-playing. We are accustomed to the familial relationship between mother and child—one of protection, shelter and emotional support. This series depicts a child engaging with an object that resembles you. What does that mean to you?
As part of the narrative, I had the figure made, as I wanted to be behind and in front of the camera. I ordered the prop; I had this object in my apartment. I used the light and the camera to make it look alive in the photographs. It is a strange and artificial thing. The place where it’s alive is the photograph. In its documentation, I found I had to think and feel something more about this idea.
Image credit: Aneta Grzeszykowska, Mama nr. 44, 2018. Courtesy Raster Gallery, Lyles & King Gallery, the artist.
Was it unsettling having this doll-like object in the house?
For us, the object wasn’t strange. We live in an artist’s house; my husband and I are artists, and my daughter is accustomed to this.
It’s not you exactly, it’s a double that’s not alive. The difference disappears in the photograph. Suddenly, I noticed my daughter, about 6 years old at the time, started to use this doll prop, combing its hair, putting lipstick on, and I realised it’s a great thing she’s doing. She’s playing with it. From my point of view, it is kind of a performance. If I start to take pictures of it, I will have the work done. It was like a readymade thing. Acting with is different – from a child’s perspective, it’s playing, and from my perspective, it’s performance.
I started making scenarios to add to this story. I was just taking pictures of her playing with it. Of course there’s a lot of additional locations with water, the beautiful scenery, places that make the situation seem like stills from a movie. It plays with the viewer also. The viewer suddenly forgets that it is me taking the pictures, so everyone is thinking that my daughter is acting with her mother. And that’s the point. We identify with her feelings, but the situation was like making a movie. My daughter couldn’t be somehow confused, as it was me standing behind the camera and talking to her. It’s an intense situation where even when we know how the work is done, we still have this psychological point of view that’s so strong that we forget about the parts that make it come together.
Mama is about motherhood and power relations. About the viewer identifying with the works. People related to my daughter and the doll. One person said, ‘I’m not sure that this work is for me as I don’t have children’ – a moment later, he said, ‘but I am a child of my parents’. So, you can have a connection to this work.
When was the moment you knew you would be an artist?
Very early. I started early at the Palace of Culture during the communist period in Poland. We had a lot of different activities there. Children were given tools. I was quite good at painting and drawing. I was also part of a special dance group called Gewęda, where we represented Poland and performed abroad, both dancing and singing. It had a huge influence on my future. I am very good at all these performative mediums and thinking about how to use the body, how to use it even when not present, such as in the Mama project. I am thinking about the body, but from a different perspective, when you are outside the body. Kind of philosophical. The discourse started in my childhood.
Your command of your body and its influence on your work is intriguing. Has that changed over time?
Yes, it has changed. My point of interest has changed over the years. At the beginning, I was trying to discuss my identity in this artistic field and to compete with famous artists, and trying to remove myself to explore repetition and still have my own identity. I was questioning my body and replacing it with different objects, such as in The Selfie (2014) where I made fragments of my body from pig skin and photographed the process and the production of it. The viewer doesn’t know if it’s the destruction of the object or the construction of the object.
For me, the most interesting thing in art is ambivalence; you don’t really know what you see. Is it constructed or deconstructed? Is it alive or dead? Is it an object or a living being? So, I started to replace my body with different objects, such as animal flesh, and then went further with Mama, which is a double that looks like me. When my daughter was born, somehow, I feared that in real life, not just in my art practice, my self-identity would split into different parts as she started to be more important. First, you are so existential about your being, and then it’s not about you.
Your Untitled Film Stills, 2006, is a reinterpretation of Cindy Sherman’s iconic series, colourized and partly a nod to your urban surrounds in Warsaw. How did this homage of sorts come about?
First, I made a photography book about my family and erased myself from it. It’s just a simple book, an archive about my family and I just erased myself from the story. These are pictures of my parents at a wedding. I become invisible. It’s a narrative created around me, yet erasing me. It was existential, seeing how the scenario plays out without this person (me).
This second series I made (Untitled Film Stills) is somehow similar. It’s kind of replacing Sherman’s character, but in fact, even if she is not visible anymore in the image, it is she who is visible. A kind of twist in the storytelling. My being visible is, in fact, Cindy Sherman. Acting from a different perspective. It was kind of artistic suicide because it was risky to start something that’s about such a famous artist.
Image credit: Aneta Grzeszykowska, Untitled Film Stills nr. 34, 2006. Courtesy Raster Gallery, Lyles & King Gallery, the artist.
Is she aware of the series?
Yes, I had an exhibition at the same place she displayed her suite of works, and her series was displayed at the same time. I was thinking that it was so funny, as my series was in colour, it was not like a movie, more like television, more artificial.
Tell us about Beauty Masks (2017). They appear fetishised and almost suggest the burden to change. How we are to attain an ideal image?
For me, it was interesting thinking of the body as a sculpture. We do try to sculpt this, by using different methods. To be more beautiful.
The mask covers the body, but what’s inside somehow is deformed by the mask. The holes show the moment of the face, which is visible. The part of the body that is covered with the mask is invisible. It relates to my body of work, always more interested in the hidden; me being hidden behind the camera in the Mama series, it’s me, hidden behind Cindy Sherman’s fame. Even if I am visible, I am still covered by her personality. In the Beauty Mask series, it’s more formal and more concrete, though it’s also about this and sculpting ourselves.
What do you have in store in the future?
I am working on a new series with different members of my family, and with my parents taking part. I am preparing it for an exhibition in New York in the fall. Also, an exhibition called ‘Privacy Settings’ at KVOST Kunstverein Ost in Berlin. It’s an exhibition of works mostly in the collection of Deutsche Telekom. Some of the works are also borrowed from Warsaw. It questions the idea of privacy, and are we the image, or more than that?
Image credit: Aneta Grzeszykowska, portrait. Photo: Michał Kaczyński.
Aneta Grzeszykowska is featured in the veil at Buxton Contemporary from June 27 to November 1, 2025.
buxtoncontemporary.com
