Afterbeauty

Born in 1987 in Lublin, Marta Zgierska is a graduate of the National Film, Television, and Theater School in ?ód?. Her photographic work explores the body, trauma, disappearance, and the forms of constraint exerted on the individual. Winner of the HSBC Photography Prize in 2016, she was named Artist of the Year at the DongGang International Photo Festival in 2019.

Presented at Intervalle in 2019, Afterbeauty & Votive Figure is Marta Zgierska’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, following Post in 2017. Both series share the common approach of starting with a gesture applied to the body to preserve a trace of it, before transforming it into a photographic object.

In Afterbeauty, Zgierska photographs the cosmetic masks she applies to her own face after using them. These remnants of the beauty ritual are isolated and become organic, ambiguous forms, straddling the line between skin, imprint, and abstract object. In Votive Figure, the bodily trace takes on a symbolic dimension: it evokes an offering, a relic, or an ex-voto.

The juxtaposition of the two series thus shifts the exhibition from self-care to ritual, from beauty to sacrifice. Zgierska reveals what lies behind practices intended to transform the body: a relationship made up of desire, discipline, fragility, and self-effacement.