Gallery 2
    10.03 - 30.04.2000


    Monika Duda

    Monika Duda
    Unmade - photography

    --- Curator: Pawel Polit


    Exhibition opening 10.03 at 6 p.m.


    The Unmade project is a set of naturalistic self-portraits. The photographs taken from January to June 1999, show a face of a young woman without decoration, just before the make-up was put on. This work denies the usual ways of presenting a woman’s face, it puts in doubt the social need to “correct” one’s appearance in order to fit to the culturally fixed stereotype of a good look. The modelling effects used in Unmade, the nuances in the way of framing expose the physical presence of the body, its liability and quantity of different states, rather than the mere personality of the author. The noticeable symptoms on the face relate to physiological processes inside the body that are hidden from the spectators eyes.
    Monika Duda Monika Duda Monika Duda
    In the Unmade set Monika Duda tries to decodify the woman’s picture. The face without mascara shows us its distinctive and individual features. These photographs combine the elements of minimal art and body art, they also relate to the ready-made tradition initiated by Marcel Duchamp. They can be seen as a comment to the nature of photography, which as Roland Barthes wants it is “a message without a code”.

    Monika Duda
    born in1967 in Lublin, lives and works in London.

    She graduated on the London Guildhall University (1993-1997); right now she is studying photography in The Royal College of Art in London. She also studied history of art in the Academy of Catholic Theology in Warsaw (1986-1992).

    Individual exhibition:
    The Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, Londyn (1999)

    Group exhibitions:
    What Difference Does It Make    , Cambridge Darkroom Gallery, Cambridge (1998);
    Le Jardin, Stockwell Studios, Londyn (1998).
    Publications:
    Unmade    , art booklet (1999).


    The exhibition was organised in co-operation with The British Council



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