Natalia Dołgowska is a versatile artist and filmmaker bridging art and film. With academic credentials from Jagiellonian University, University of Warsaw, and the esteemed Wajda Film School, her impact spans art exhibitions, publications, and hybrid documentaries. She is pursuing a Ph.D. at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and is a Kosciuszko Foundation scholarship holder. She has participated in programs like UnionDocs – Center for Documentary Art in New York, IDFAcademy, and CPH Academy. She is a laureate of the Young Artists’ Biennale in Słupsk, and her latest work was shown at the European Media Art Festival No. 36 in Osnabrück, Germany. Her projects ‘It Is All America’ and ‘Is it Worth’ were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

Upon entering the physical space between this four-part video-installation, the visitor is quickly immersed in the familiarity of a mundane home setting. We observe a collage of mainly steady shots where the only movement is that of two women in a state of delicate motion. The choreography harmonizes with its surroundings whilst at the same time counters the static space through movement in reverse. This stylistic choice of inversion elegantly brings the audience closer to the work’s overarching theme of female resistance within the confines of a traditional value system that still harbors a major presence in our society. The women in the video become the subject of and antagonist to the ‘home setting’, a stereotypical representation of the Humanist patriarchal society. The artwork emphasizes a fragile, yet forceful attempt of real women using their bodies in a struggle against the limitations of the physical rooms and social expectations they interact with. The artist reintroduces the audience to the idea of feminism through a calculated, yet nuanced medium bringing to the forefront the affective (emotional) influence that Humanist ideals can have on individuals. By simultaneously presenting the films on multiple screens accompanied with an ambient, instrumental soundscape, the artwork carefully intertwines potent ideologies, such as Posthuman feminism and patriarchy, with the sensory, as a kind of literalization of affect’s materiality. As opposed to Julian Rosefeldt’s 2015 video installation titled Manifesto, which shares a similar format, wherein the concept of language plays a significant role in meaning making, Dołgowska’s piece becomes rather a manifesto of the senses – where the actresses’ bodies become the bearers of change. This performance is symbolic of a subtle defiance of womanhood, and an invitation for a deeper reflection on how we, the public, personally resist the confines of our own reality every day.

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