#curatorial

After Nature: Untitled Data Model No. Two (Pecan Tree, English Ivy, Northern Cardinal, White-Eyed Vireo, Carolina Wren) - mixed media frame animation - robert matejcek - 2025

“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” - Theodore Roethke

Dormant Lands editorial

16 pages editorial published in Kwartalnik Fotografia no. 49/2025

Text & curatorial edition: Grażyna Siedlecka

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of co-curating the open call and writing the accompanying essay for Dormant Lands, published in the printed edition of Kwartalnik Fotografia.

Editorial brings together seven photographic projects that explore spaces where the past intertwines with the present - landscapes marked by memory, silence, and transformation. These are places that may seem forgotten or lifeless, yet still hold hidden stories and traces of human presence.

The selection was made through an open call organised by Galeria Centrala and Fresh From Poland Foundation, under the patronage of Kwartalnik Fotografia.

Artists featured: Joanna Czarnota, Piotr Zugaj, Rafał Siderski, Stanisław Bagdia, Krzysztof Sawicki, Paulina Korobkiewicz, Krzysztof Szewczyk, Paweł Biedrzycki

Jury: Gregor Sailer, Grażyna Siedlecka, Anka Gregorczyk, Marek Zakrzewski, Waldemar Śliwczyński

At just 7 years old her mother gave her over to trusted close friends with whom she immigrated from Barbados to the US with. Eventually settling in Harlem, NY where she graduated from Wadleigh High School in 1930. Now known as Wadleigh Secondary School For the Performing and Visual Arts, the only accredited arts high school in Harlem.

She went on to attend Howard University studying fine arts with Lois Mailou Jones and printmaker James Lesesne Wells from 1931-1933. The thick of The Great Depression caused financial hardship for Knight who had to drop out before receiving her degree. She then returned to NY and began work at the Works Projects Administration as an assistant to the muralist, Charles Alston. She didn’t let her early departure from college stop her. She continued studying art at the Harlem Community Arts center where she was mentored by Augusta Savage. Through Savage, she met and was exposed to the work of other artists, poets, and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. 

In 1934 she joined another Works Projects Administration mural project, where she met fellow painter and future husband Jacob Lawrence. In 1946 Knight and her husband were invited to teach at Black Mountain College, a private Liberal Arts College in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Returning to work and live in NY during the 1950s.

She then moved with her husband to Seattle Washington after he accepted a job at the University of Washington’s School of Art. The traveling and work she has done from the 40s-60s some would say makes her an itinerant artist. She is quoted in a Callaloo magazine interview with Charles H. Rowell saying “It wasn’t necessary for me to have acclaim… I just knew that I wanted to do it, so I did it whenever I could.”

Knight procured support from the National Links, INC for her first one woman show that was developed in 1976. This exhibit created a greater desire for her works and acquiring of her pieces by national museums. 

Knight’s work was concentrated on storytelling paintings that illustrated the lives, culture, and history of African Americans that surrounded her own daily life.  Her paintings encompassed a diverse range of subjects such as still life, portraits, and urban scenes. She worked with a variety of different mediums from oil paints, water colors, and gouache. Later in her artistic journey her paintings started to have a more poetic depiction of animals through etching and monoprints. You can also see that she draws from her admiration for African dance, sculpture, and theatre.

https://jacobandgwenlawrence.org/

Deana Lawson, Otisha, 2014 | Marianne Boesky Gallery

A Venus Who Cannot Recline: Otisha

It's a universal inclination that we all feel when we step into our homes; that sentiment of freedom. Our real selves are revealed in the absence of fear, and soon we realize the power that comes with having the range to expose the desires of the soul. The warm embrace of freedom never has to flee when you've been conditioned to believe that the whole world is your home. You are reaffirmed that you belong as you step into board rooms, when you look on the television, or even as you arrive on college campuses. Society's framework has been constructed to nurture your existence, so that makes you believe, freedom is your God-given right. However, for some, autonomy can not be separated from resistance, when everything attempts to remove you from your body. Your existence is defined and dictated into what it should be and can never just be. Before you know it, you are a refugee seeking solace within your flesh. According to Feminist scholar and writer Bell Hooks, the black female body is always in view and on view. Patriarchy, capitalism, and the social construct of gender has led to the fetishization of black women and making others incapable of seeing past their physical.

But what happens when there is more to the story? Deana Lawson's role in constructing a narrative of the black female experience is so vital and extends past limits held within the borders of a photo. Venuses for centuries have been a product of a white man’s imagination, but a great deal of concern arises with this tradition. When left to be depicted by society the Black female body goes under symbolic annihilation. Reclaiming that power from hundreds of years is an act of courage that will live on to break the cycles of curses on generations to come. Lawson uses her camera as a scepter that transforms pain into power.

A rectangular frame, composed to depict the angular framework and inner workings of a Black woman's mind. She invites me into this domestic space where there is a sense of familiarity, but synchronously, her presence demands the same reverence given to royalty. Cowhide black, brown, and white love seats nearly fill the whole frame, yet she cannot recline on a single one. Two gazes challenge the camera, almost in an act to assert their rightful occupancy within the area. The mouth of the acute angle formed by the juxtaposition of the couches announces the gaze of the white tiger woven into the black carpet. It is a naturalistic portrayal of a similar furiousness the creature would have in nature. Still, the interruption of the subject on its face brings me back to the realization that this is her kingdom. The asymmetrical positioning of her body guides me into her direct awareness of the camera. Her gaze and slanted position on the couch creates a tension held within the organization, but helps address her presence in the photograph. The plastic-covered sofas across from her, create a sheen that accentuates the richness of melanin in her skin. Although she is nude, her body is not on the line for male satisfaction. She is addressing an issue much more extensive: her existence.

This photo exists in the realm where technique merges with conceptuality to raise questions about the contemporary world we live in. Deana Lawson creates an image that feels like it has a place in my family photograph collection, yet still reminds me that it is an exceptionally adapted piece of artistry by the way it highlights the black female body. In a lecture, given by Deana Lawson, she clarifies how the photo Otisha came into origination. Captured in Kingston Jamaica, Otisha pursues a theme of using domestic spaces as a site of power for the individuals of the African Diaspora, a topic that is continuous across Lawson's body of work. As I look at Otisha, I don't just see one individual woman; I see an embodiment of all the black women pitted continuously against the white gaze in a fight for their lives. The strength that comes from her hands to support her body upright in a diagonal position represents the constant endurance that black women must possess to maintain the elements of their beings. Otisha has symbols of flowers and a tiger, representing the balance that accompanies the authority of femininity.