Fading Senses
Ligia Poplawska
Self Published
English
Essays by Ligia Poplawska
Softcover
25 pages
120 x 180mm
2020
ISBN Not Available
In times of multispecies extinction and devastating effects caused by climate change, environmental anxiety is a rising problem affecting societies. Solastalgia, a relatively new name describing an emotional distress caused by the loss of ecosystems, is characterised by a perspective of a fading world, a lived experience of the loss of the present. Described as an earth-related state, it reflects the zeitgeist of our time. A perspective of a fading world and a state of fading-away is close to sensory deprivation. Absence of senses, one of the biggest human fears, can lead to intra-mental perception, echolocation and memory flashbacks. ‘Fading Senses’ is a research project and a photographic essay where Ligia Poplawska examines how Solastalgia affects our mental and emotional health and research the implications of the absence of senses on brain mechanisms. As she has temporarily lost one of the senses in the past, this deprivation became her intuitive leading guide, which she has applied to the working method and to the visual language. Turning her research into a speculative narration, she aims to create a mental image of an ungraspable sensation to underline human disconnection from the natural habitat
(source:https://ligiapoplawska.com/WORKS )
About the Artist
Ligia Popławska is a visual artist and photographer currently based in Antwerp, Belgium. She graduated with MFA in Photography from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (2020) and BA in Art History from the University of Gdańsk (2016). Her work focuses on the topics of environmental change and sensory ecology. She researches the parallels between senses, memory and emotional states, in the changing conditions of the (Post) Anthropocene.
Her work has been selected for international awards, festivals, exhibitions and photography platforms such as .tiff 2022 (FOMU), Futures Photography, Helsinki Photo Festival, among others. She is a receipent of Photography Prize funded by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (2020). In 2021 her project ‘Fading Senses’ has been awarded a solo exhibition at PhMuseum Days 2021 in Bologna, Italy. She is a recipient of 1st Prize Decade of Change Series Award 2022, a global photography award and collaborative exhibition by 1854 British Journal of Photography, dedicated to documenting the defining matter of our time: the climate crisis.
Ligia works as a freelance photographer in the field of product, interior, architecture, fashion and portrait photography, as well as a photo editor, photo assistant and guest academic teacher. In 2021-2022 she has been co-creating platform Intimate Structures .
ligiapoplawska
(source:https://ligiapoplawska.com/Info )
