Series:
Intolerance
TIANANMEN
SQUARE
The individual is devoured by the harsh, ruthless forces of history. The individual is mutilated, is distorted, iis crushed. Yet, the individual is fragile, is wounded. Yet the individual is a source of inspiration.
For Polish artist Joanna Salska, the individual is an entity at once caught in the inescapable tension between being submerged, crushed, annihilated in the web of history, and movement of defiance against that very entrapment. In her studiies about the tragedy of Tiananmen Square, the artist carries these unresolvable dualities to the ultimate test: the firing line. The lone figure faces with his small defenseless body, the progression of armored tanks. The youth is thrown from the bicycle, crushed on the trampled ground. The students raise the flag of defiance; yet each of them remains an individual who must confront the terrifying vulnerability of the self and the overwhelming forces of history, at the moment when that tension is most explosive and most lethal.
This series brings us to the edge of our individual role: we must not be passive participants only, but be active witnesses to history--like Picasso's "Guernica" and Goya's "Disasters of War" the paintings are witnesses, they speak to our subjective world so that we may see how we are interlocked in our shared, common reality.
JOANNA SALSKA
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The individual is devoured by ruthless |
Gallery
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Intolerance click to enlarge |
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forces of history |
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yet the individual is a |
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source
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of inspiration.
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