Contact by Letter

The exhibition Contact by Letter recalls three stories of Polish families who emigrated to the United States, Canada and Algeria in the 1980s and 1990s. At that time, a convergence of economic, social and political factors turned emigration into the experience of thousands of Poles. At the same time, these were not yet years of widespread mobility, and travel to other continents remained available to only a few. Those who stayed in the country waited for both news: whether their loved ones had managed to settle in, and stories: what life "really" is like "over there", in that other world. Alongside text, photographic images that travelled the world became a way of sharing these experiences. Łukasz Prus-Niewiadomski set out to trace their journeys after he came across a batch of photographs by chance in an abandoned flat on the working-class Księży Młyn estate in Łódź. The photographs and the comments written on their reverse revealed that they had belonged to a woman whose children had moved to the USA. In these unexpectedly discovered traces of someone else's past, the artist noticed points of contact with the migration thread in his own family's history. Olga i Błażej Filanowscy

Łukasz Prus-Niewiadomski (born 1985 in Oran, Algeria). PhD in arts. Graduate of PWSFTviT in Łódź. Lecturer at IEA in Warsaw and PWSFTviT in Łódź. His work has been presented, among other places, at the International Festival of Photography in Łódź, at the 15th Media Art Biennale "Pioneering Values" in Wrocław, at KinoLab CSW Zamek Ujazdowski in Warsaw, at Bunkier Sztuki in Kraków, at the Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej in Opole, Galeria Wozownia in Toruń, Galeria Imaginarium in Łódź, Galeria Studio in Warsaw, Brotfabrik in Berlin, and The Performance Studio in London. More at the author's website prus-niewiadomski.com

Opening of the exhibition. Photo: Mikołaj Sambor