Children on a slide. A smiling family. A house with a garden. A collection of animals. A comb. Everything seems serene, familiar, and safe. Yet, the longer we look at Weronika Gęsicka’s works, the more our certainty wavers. The people, objects, and landscapes—transformed by the artist—begin to tell new stories. Suppressed emotions, fears, events, and truths emerge from beneath the colourful surface.

The exhibition "Skakanka" comprises works from the artist’s key projects—"Traces," "Collection," and "Cliffhanger" (including the sub-series "Smash," "Cocoon," "Holiday," and "Fun and Games"), as well as "Encyclopedia." Gęsicka is interested in the mechanisms of memory and the relationships between social memory, history, and the knowledge accumulated by societies. She also explores the cultural phenomena which shape contemporary reality and create opportunities for its manipulation.

The collages from the “Traces” series (2015–2017) are based on American photographs from the 1950s and 1960s. The artist intervenes in idyllic family and holiday scenes, suspending them between truth and fiction. In these modified images, memories of people and situations gradually blur.

In the „Collection” series (2017–2018), inspired by autobiographical experiences, Gęsicka focuses on everyday objects, traces of her own body, and the question of whether things can tell the story of a person and an era. Does the contemporary obsession with accumulating and collecting objects make it easier or harder to describe who we are? This is the only one of the presented series in which the artist steps behind the lens.

"Cliffhanger" once again makes use of stock photography. In the "Smash" series (2019–2020), Gęsicka transforms archival stock portraits by focusing on gestures. Hand poses that are initially neutral become instruments of oppression or participate in acts of self-aggression through subtle shifts and interventions.

The "Cocoon" series (2020), completed just before the COVID-19 pandemic, draws on photographs of suburban homes images associated with a sense of security and idyllic family life. These houses have been transformed into private fortresses that are difficult to enter, yet even harder to leave. "Holiday" (2019–2021) is based on holiday snapshots. These works capture a moment "in-between": the space between the end of an old reality and the beginning of a new one, between safety and danger—a fleeting instant when change is approaching, yet remains unseen. In "Fun and Games," the starting point is the personal experience of motherhood.

Gęsicka has been nominated for the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026 for her project „Encyclopedia” (2023–2026). The project encompasses hundreds of fictitious entries found in encyclopedias, dictionaries, and lexicons. These entries—often inserted as a safeguard against plagiarism—undermine the credibility of sources of knowledge. The artist illustrates them with collages based on archival materials, such as stock photography or images generated using artificial intelligence. Here, the real and the invented are accorded equal status.

The exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of Weronika Gęsicka’s work, revealing the power that stems from her ability to capture phenomena which precisely define contemporary reality and to find an apt visual form for them. In 2026—a year marked by social and political tensions—her witty, ambiguous works take on new layers of meaning.

Weronika Gęsicka (born in 1984) A visual artist. Over the past decade, she has created photographic works and installations which examine and deliberately complicate our perception of visual history, knowledge, and memory. Photography is the dominant medium of her work and practice—serving as their source, context, and material, as well as a means to explore social roles, official stories, cultural shifts, and hidden narratives. In her latest project, “Encyclopedia”, she has expanded her inquiry to include artificial intelligence tools, enabling her to venture further into hypothetical and visually uncertain realms. A graduate of the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Nominated for the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026. Winner of numerous awards, including the “Polityka” Passport (2019) in the Visual Arts category (2020), the EMOP Arendt Award (2019), and Foam Talent (2017). Her work has been published in numerous magazines, including “The Guardian”, “The New York Times”, “Internazionale”, “Spiegel Online”, and “Le Monde”.

9, October, (Friday)

4 p.m.– Meeting with the artist – Cinema Hall, Rectorate building
6 p.m. – Exhibition opening – Szklarnia 2, New Media Centre building, 1st floor

The exhibition is open until 23, October.

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