THE EXCHANGE #2 - 2022

Krakow Photomonth festival and Piana Gallery

Curators : Iñaki Domingo and Chloé Azzopardi

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On the occasion of the 20th Krakow Photomonth Festival, I was invited to curate a month-long exhibition at the Piana Gallery in Krakow.

 

The exhibition opened in May, and I first visited Krakow in February, a week before Russia invaded Ukraine. The geopolitical situation was already on everyone's mind, and it seemed impossible to propose an exhibition that didn't take into account the cataclysm that this war would create.

 

I decided to built a wooden module - a device halfway between an exhibition display and a simple vehicle - which enabled me to go out and meet the people of Krakow and ask them to exchange a photo for a personal object or a story they wanted to tell me. Accompanied by Polish and Ukrainian translators, I crossed several districts of the city to meet different people with the 170 posters I had stored in my display case.

The fruits of these exchanges, whether in the form of conversation or objects, were installed every evening in the Piana Gallery.

 

This performance gave rise to over a hundred exchanges. A woman gave me her son's passport photo, which she'd had in her purse for 20 years. A dancer traded me her pointe shoes, a young man entrusted me with his deliveryman's badge that he wanted to get rid of. I heard stories of violence suffered as a child, concerns and anger about Polish politics. I was offered a meal, poems, ukrainian hryvnia, dried flowers, children's toys, surgical masks, gardening equipment...

 

This performance-exhibition is now touring, having taken place twice in China (Shanghai and Aranya) and will be held in Paris in 2025.