Joanna Piotrowska at HAGIWARA PROJECTS / Tokyo

 Joanna Piotrowska / Toride

 March 25 – April 22, 2023

HAGIWARA PROJECTS
〒135-0006 東京都江東区常盤1-13-6-1F
1-13-6-1F Tokiwa, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-0006 Japan

HAGIWARA PROJECTS is
pleased to announce “Toride,” a solo exhibition by Polish artist
Joanna Piotrowska, opening March 25. This will be the artist’s first solo
exhibition in Japan. Based in London, Piotrowska has recently had solo
exhibitions at Tate Britain and Kunsthalle Basel, and participated in
“Being: New photography 2018″ at MoMA, New York, and ” The Milk
of Dreams” at the Venice Biennale in 2022.

 

Piotrowska’s photographic
work focuses on the relationship between family structures and human behavior
and broader systems, including social and cultural life. Her photographs of
oddly entangled bodies and women performing gestures and movements from
self-defense manuals transform gentle, intimate everyday gestures into new
scenarios of liberation and repression.

 

This exhibition presents
a series of photographs of “shelters” that adults have built in their
homes using furniture and furnishings. Shelters remind us of children’s games,
such as fort building and secret bases, but when adults are involved, they also
bring to bear the hierarchy of power within the home, insecurities, imposed
conventions, and even notions of inequality that are magnified by political and
economic factors.

Enclosures,” another
series featured in this exhibition, depicts the cages and enclosures of zoos.
The photographs of toys and objects designed by humans to “enrich”
the lives of animals further highlight the dichotomy at work between protection
and oppression.