Printmaking, Portraits and Identity

Yesterday afternoon Krystyna Piotrowska introduced us to the creative variety of Printmaking. While she has worked in a range of media, from photography and film to installations, her work is fundamentally based on Printmaking. The Art of Printmaking is by definition one of impressions - no two prints are ever identical, and the medium allows for challenging notions of original versus copy, and of originality itself.

A key theme in her work revolves around the concept of the self-portrait. The only face we can never see is our own: we view it only as a reflection, be it in a mirror or a photograph. We can only ever see a copy of ourselves. So she presents us with double images of the same face, one the “original”, the other a “copy”, or a mirror-image. These rival versions challenge the viewer. Sometimes distorted, sometimes re-arranged, they play with notions of identity, and our perception of the identities of others.

These themes are developed in one of her most recent projects, Margaret’s Golden Hair. At its centre lies the overpowering installation, A Braid, constructed from the hair of countless women, interwoven into one continuous line. The identities of these anonymous women are melded into a single object, collapsing the very notion of portraiture.