Pink doesn’t exist
It all starts very innocently, from small every day problems. Behaviours, which seem to be strange, insignificant but challenging, are very often excused by immaturity due to age, emotional or social problems. A constant feeling of isolation, fear, worry, an inability to cope with simple yet everyday problems. These are only a few of the emotions which accompany depression - a disease prevalent in our contemporary civilisation. It can affect everybody in spite of their gender, age, social, work or family position, but also those who we love most – our children. Due to the perceived shame they often try to hide it from friends, family and the world.
Iwona Germanek is an artist, a photographer and most importantly a mother who is trying to capture her own very personal experience of having a depressed child using the medium of photography. In art we can question if whether or not this is the right implement to deal with depression and if it can help the subject and artist to heal through the process. These questions come to mind after seeing Iwona Germanek’s photography. More often than not these questions are formed when the artist has used their talent as an attempt to cope with a personal trauma or illness. In this context can be difficult to distinguish art from life. The same can be seen in the project ‘Pink doesn’t exist’, where we can observe the relationship of a mother and a suffering daughter. A very famous Polish art curator said ‘‘There are topics and spheres of every day life which we try to not see or not remember on a daily basis. There are artists who encourage us to peek behind the curtain and say: look and see how some of the people (who you don’t think about) live. They reach for drastic topics because the mission of contemporary art isn’t to provide pleasure but to raise an issue and provoke reflection.’’ This quote seems to be very accurate when it comes to ‘Pink doesn’t exist’. This project is a direct incarnation of the words spoken by the art curator whilst simultaneously dealing with problems which exceed far beyond the realms of art and photography. Iwona Germanek has been present in her daughter Wiktoria’s life throughout the whole therapy and recovery processes. A mother is often the first therapist and always a faithful companion.
Mother – a warrior fighting for her child, lost in a sea of experiences; fear, pain, anxiety, helplessness and tiredness. Mother remains an artist, registering the whole therapy and recovery process. She observes the therapeutic change in the self-portraits painted by Wiktoria. As she starts to feel better, the colours she uses in her art change, pink appears. Pink gives hope.
Iwona Germanek says: “Black and white deformed body, face with dead eyes. These self-portraits started changing alongside the progress of the therapy. Apparently pink doesn’t exist. It is only the interpretation of our brains.
But this colour, like hope, slowly began entering onto Wiktoria’s canvas and her grey colour started getting warmer.”
Germanek seems to be a modern Warrior. On one hand a fragile and delicate Artist, on the other hand a strong and tenacious Woman fighting for her daughter’s wellbeing. This peculiar combination results in deeply moving works. The Artist uses all her photography and other art related abilities. She tells us her story in a very subtle way. She takes photos of her daughter’s art work which are produced during the therapy process. She is trying to find Wiktoria’s photos in the family archive which show the first symptoms of the illness. To her statement, she adds a moving photo which is Wiktoria’s portrait created as a result of a mistake on the memory card of the camera. She covers the photo with wax to show the symbol of numbness and inability to connect with the world. On some of the other photos she glues Japanese tissue paper, then she scrapes it off from Wiktoria’s face almost as if she wanted to save her daughter from the invisible curtain separating her from the rest of the world.
Iwona Germanek shows courage telling us her story. She make public what many of us would want to hide from the world. She is telling a very intimate and dramatic story dealing with her child’s disease. The author leads us through the tangled and internal worlds of Mother and Daughter. Her projects are examples of accustoming people to this painful experience through the medium of art. Those photos aren’t shouty manifestos written on art gallery walls. This is a message of tenderness, love and the strength of Motherhood and an Artist. This is a moving photographic story which shows many dimensions of overcoming an illness and the inner strength which pushes us to fight.
Krzysztof Gołuch
The works are in the collection of the Silesian Museum in Katowice
