Europe

Marta Deskur (born in 1962) is an artist known for her elaborate multimedia installations – figural photographic compositions, often supplemented by videos. One of her favourite techniques is lightbox, which involves printing photographs on transparent foils to be illuminated from behind. Such prints are mounted in special boxes equipped with lamps. Lightbox enables the artist to achieve a unique aesthetic effect – the photographs seem to shine with some sort of intrinsic light, thus gaining a special aura. The artist skilfully uses the characteristics of the lightbox technique in many of her projects, employing it in her 2002 project Dziewice – a series of photographs of pregnant women who responded to the artist's invitation to cooperate, which she published in papers. Placing the portrayed women against a white, neutral background and lighting them from behind makes the women’s silhouettes unreal, as if they existed in an undefined space. The impression of imaginative character of the images of women is intensified by digital processing of the photographs, including replacing the faces of the project participants with the face of the artist herself. The formal solutions used by the artist, as well as the perverse title she gave to the work, have a significant impact on the message of the work. Thanks to them, Deskur transforms the source material – a series of photographs of pregnant women – into an intriguing visual puzzle.

Magdalena Lewoc