Joanna Piotrowska: unseeing eyes, restless bodies, on view through December 01, 2024 at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Philadelphia, has two entrances. Through one, viewers enter a darkened space where a floor-to-ceiling projection of a black-and-white video plays. Through the other, a brushed concrete floor gives way to two separate rooms with light bubble-gum pink plush carpeting; the bright light in each of the rooms bounces off vividly white walls that are punctuated with black-and-white framed photographs. This contrast in textures and sense characterises the exhibition, in which Piotrowska seeks to explore touch and intimacy through photography, video and installation. Throughout the exhibition, the artist’s first in the United States, Piotrowska wrests with two poles of touch: tender and threatening.
The dynamic between close relationships—friends, families, lovers—is a frequent theme for Piotrowska. Casting gestures such as an embrace, a clasped hand, or a caress as acts of performance, she explores the powers within each through a range of mediums, including photography, video and installation, as well as performance. Her frequent use of coloured plush carpets paired with intimate images of domestic interiors imbues gallery spaces with a disquieting sense of being watched or scientifically studied from afar. This is certainly the feeling in unseeing eyes, restless bodies, with its almost maze-like configuration of rooms.
The sound of a precise and polished female voice permeates the space. This is from Tactile Afferents (2023), a short video (running six minutes, 30 seconds) that plays on a loop in the darkened entry to the exhibition. “In reversibility of touch, one has the feeling of both touching and being touched at the same time,” the voice says towards the video’s start. Selected and arranged by Piotrowska, these are words from Richard Kearney’s 2021 book, Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense, in which the Irish philosopher locates reciprocity as essential to touch, though it is only ever felt individually. “Touching and being touched is what makes every sensation capable of reciprocal experience,” he writes, his words appearing at the bottom of Piotrowska’s screen in white against a black background as the voice speaks. When there are no words, Piotrowska interjects footage of human hands and other body parts touching (petting, stroking, pulling, milking) a sheep. Close-up shots of the sheep’s furry wool, sharp hoof and teeth are intermingled throughout, though we never see the head or face of the person touching the animal. Who is this person and what is their relationship to the sheep? What are their intentions? Can interspecies touch be shared even if spoken language isn’t? At points, the animal seems to enjoy or be pained by the person’s handling. Are we seeing images of contentment or menace? Is this a reciprocal touch? These questions figuratively percolate through the exhibition, just as the video’s voice does.
Piotrowska’s photographs, all silver gelatin prints of various sizes installed at equally irregular intervals along the pristine white walls, depict ambiguous affinities as well. In the smaller room, scenes of uncomfortable domesticity abound. For instance, in Untitled (2019), one of the largest prints depicts an adolescent or adult-sized body to the shoulders laying in a crib, their feet gently resting on the ornately patterned carpet below. The crib appears to be next to a larger bed, its floral pattern in contrast to the person’s horizontally striped dress. A geometrically tessellated pad seems to be just beneath the crib. Piotrowska’s cropping of the image makes it seem as though the image’s patterns might seep into the exhibition space, the pink carpeting giving the sense that we are in a living room or bedroom. This heightens the eccentricity of the image; what is a fully grown person doing dressed and in a child’s cot? Why are they being photographed? Just as she contrasts textures and patterns, Piotrowska also juxtaposes sentiment. To the right of the work is another untitled photograph (2017) that depicts a pile of neatly arranged laundry. Along the outside walls of this room are a pair of untitled images from 2016 and 2017, each portraying female figures within constructions of clothes and furniture. Again, these are cryptic. Are the figures playing or hiding?
Nowhere is Piotrowska more enigmatic than in the adjacent room within a room, which has a pink carpet moat surrounding a carpet-less room. Inside this room are some of the only works that do not include the human body or fragments of it. At its centre is Untitled (2016), which portrays a suite of doors in a house opening into each other with an eerie effect, both inviting and haunting. Outside this room are a series of silver gelatin hand prints on wood veneer depicting pairs of bodies in various types of touch. However, for each pair, Piotrowska has left one body absent, its form delineated in the wood veneer’s grainy texture and a haptic presence takes shape through furniture, blankets and other lived-with materials. Perhaps the surfaces of our stuff can stand in for ourselves, a tactile membrane through which we sense and ‘see’ intimacy.
Installed along the periphery of this gallery is a grouping of four photographs (an installation conceived in 2023 of untitled photographs created between 2014 and 2023). Each depicts female figures contorting into various poses, always with their faces obscured. In one, the figure crouches on all fours on cement outdoor pavers. This pose and its outdoor context recall Valie Export’s Body Configurations (1972-82) series, in which female bodies shape themselves around city sidewalks and streets. Like Export, Piotrowska stages her photographs and shares a conceptual interest in touch and the power dynamics therein. Export’s TAP and TOUCH CINEMA (1968/1989), in which men on a city street are invited to touch a woman’s middle by reaching their hands into a cardboard box that she’s wearing, is a progenitor of sorts to Piotrowska’s Tactile Afferents and its meditation on reciprocity and interspecies relationships. If Export ushered the conversation of gendered hierarchies of touch into discourse, Piotrowska expands and dissects it in unseeing eyes, restless bodies.