The idea of the Death and Transition exhibition emerged when some of
us from South London Women Artists group were chatting during the invigilation of another SLWA exhibition.
We reflected on how the focus of life changes when our parents are
getting old and vulnerable, or when people close to us go through a challenging
illness. Several of us were in this situation and we thought it would be a good
idea to address the concept of Death with an art exhibition. We also agreed
that the Transition element in Death is very important: Death is not final, we
are on the journey in which Death is just another station. In the end we are
alone, each with our spiritual journey to go through. We might have different
beliefs and cultural backgrounds, but Death unites us all, makes us all
equal.
We, the curators, invited the artists to take their own approach in
expressing the concept of Death. We might treat it on a very personal, intimate
level or go for a more abstract, universal expression. Death is as individual
as it is universal and it is interesting so see what this means to different
artists.
Personally, I assumed that my contribution to the exhibition will be
one big, abstract painting. But something else emerged: a triptych of 3 very
small mixed media pictures, titled ‘The Geographer’. The Geographer in question
is my father who died in 1997, aged 69. He was a professor at the University of
Lodz, in the department of Cartography. My father and I were very close. As a
teenager, I remember spending many evening hours working on my photographs in
the University’s dark room, while he was catching up on checking his students’
work.
During the war, when he was just 16 years old, he was taken to
Germany and put in the work camp. He escaped and walked all the way back home,
to a little village in central Poland. It took him many weeks. My brave father,
a teenager, walked at night and slept during the day, always hidden from view,
often in cemeteries. The place of the dead, the cemetery, gave him safety and
comfort.
I inherited many old maps from my father’s collection. In the ‘The
Geographer’ triptych I used the fragments of an old German war time map of the
area we come from, where the names of Polish villages are accompanied by German
names. My work is still in progress. With it I hope to express that Death did
not separate us. My father is still with me and he will always be in my heart.
Death and Transition exhibition - work in progress
