30.09–23.10.2021
The opening of the exhibition is taking place during Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2021
30.09–3.10.2021
Premiere of the book Strike by Rafał Milach: 1.10.2021, 18:00 Galeria Jednostka/Stacja Muranów
Guests: Aleksandra Boćkowska, Iwona Kurz, Rafał Milach
Host: Katarzyna Sagatowska
JEDNOSTKA Gallery
Andersa 13, 00-159 Warszawa
opening hours during WGW:
Thursday–Sunday 11:00–19:00
opening hours outside WGW
Tuesday–Saturday 14:00–18:00
As part of the Warsaw Gallery Weekend, Jednostka Gallery will show an individual exhibition by Rafał Milach, which is also the result of the artist’s collaboration with other artists and writers. The installation will include photographs, posters and the premiere book “Strike” published by Jednostka. The exhibition and publication will be accompanied by critical texts by visual culture researchers, journalists and activists (Iwona Kurz, Karolina Gembara, Aleksandra Boćkowska), the cover of the book will be designed by Ola Jasionowska, the graphic designer behind the visual identification of the Women’s Strike (Strajk Kobiet) protest movement and its logo of a red lighting bolt. The exhibition and publication will channel the spirit of intervention, solidarity, and aid. Part of the proceeds from sales of the edition will be donated to organizations fighting for women’s rights.
“Gazes intersect. They are myriad and varied: from above, from the side, from behind, extended and persistent, fleeting, impassive, dictated by fear, duty, a sense of strength and curiosity. This range is a feature not only of the sociopolitical spectacle unfolding on city streets but is inherent to photography itself. Photography as an interpenetration of gazes.” So writes Karolina Gembara, one of three authors of texts for Rafał Milach’s book and exhibition Strike (Strajk), which is set to premiere during Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2021 at JEDNOSTKA Gallery.
Strike is a visual record of the protests that began across Poland on October 22, 2020, and which persisted in various forms over the ensuing months. In a second text, Aleksandra Boćkowska chronicles the personal reflections of some of the participants of protests in Kartuzy, Lubaczów, Warsaw, and Kraków.
Since 2019, Milach, together with sixteen fellow photographers, has been a co-creator of the Archive of Public Protests (APP), a platform for gathering documentation of social actions and grassroots initiatives that have opposed political decisions executed in violation of principles of democracy and human rights. Strike is a piece of this archive.
The exhibition and book Strike examine one of the most significant formation processes contemporary Polish society has experienced. As Iwona Kurz writes in the project’s third text: “As a result of the strikes, the process of political self-organization continues, its outcome unknown. However, photographic documentation of the protests is a clarion call to all of our imaginations. Here I am referring to the thinking of Georges Didi-Huberman, who proposes that a photograph be treated not as a performance, but as an event the viewer must reconstruct. Image as ‘act,’ he writes, after Jean-Paul Sartre.[1] The point here is to go one step further: less to reconstruct an event that transpired than to construct a reality designed within it. After all, the photographs ‘seem utterly real.’”[2]
Strike book by Rafał Milach:
2000 copies including 50 copies of the special edition with the poster by Ola Jasionowska
Photographs: Rafał Milach
Editing & sequencing: Rafał Milach
Cover graphics: Ola Jasionowska
Book design: Ania Nałęcka-Milach & Rafał Milach
Texts: Aleksandra Boćkowska, Karolina Gembara, Iwona Kurz
Managing editor: Joanna Osiewicz-Lorenzutti
Translations: Stefan Lorenzutti, Joanna Osiewicz-Lorenzutti, Samuel Tchorek-Bentall
Editing of texts: Małgorzata Poździk (PL), Stefan Lorenzutti (EN)
Proofreading of Polish texts: Małgorzata Kuśnierz, Izabela Poręba
Publisher: JEDNOSTKA Gallery
First edition
165 x 207 mm
256 pages
ISBN: 978-83-949273-4-9
more…
– regular edition: 20 EURO + European and worldwide shipping: 12 EURO
Rafał Milach (born 1978)
Visual artist, photographer, author of photo books. Professor at the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School in Katowice, Poland and the ITF Institute of Creative Photography of the Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic. His award-winning photo books include The Winners, 7 Rooms, and The First March of Gentlemen. Rafał Milach has received scholarships from the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Magnum Foundation, and European Cultural Foundation. Finalist of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2018 and winner of the World Press Photo competition. Member of Magnum Photos since 2018. His works have been widely exhibited in Poland and worldwide, and can be found in the collections of the MoMA Warsaw, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, the ING Polish Art Foundation, Kiyosato, the Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan), and Brandts in Odense (Denmark).
Partner: Artesola Gallery
[1] Georges Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All, trans. Shane B. Lillis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 113.
[2] Walter Lippmann, quoted in: Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 22.
Ola Jasionowska, graphic for the cover of the ‘Strike’ book by Rafał Milach, publisher: Jednostka, 2021
Rafał Milach, from the ‘Strike’ series, 2020
Rafał Milach, from the ‘Strike’ series, 2021
Rafał Milach, from the ‘Strike’ series, 2020
Rafał Milach, from the ‘Strike’ series, 2020