Joanna Piotrowska Visualizes the Power of Small Gestures

In what sense are the gestures in Joanna Piotrowska’s pictures photographic? A woman, whose face we do not see, crosses her arm over her torso, the tip of her index finger landing below her clavicle. A man lifts his head, although the picture is framed so that we can see only his neck and Adam’s apple. An older woman presses her closed fist onto the forehead of a younger woman. An unshaven young man lies with his head cradled in the arms of an older man. Another woman in side profile rests her head against a wall, her arms dangling, midway up a stairwell.

Joanna Piotrowska is a Polish artist who lives and works in London. She has exhibited widely, including at last year’s Venice Biennale, the Tate Britain, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In Entre Nous, Piotrowska’s current retrospective at Le Bal in Paris, photographs and two videos from each of her major series are on display. All of the pictures are untitled black-and-white prints, several large-scale, and many have the gestural expressiveness of Baroque religious painting. They present us with scenes in which people are often in mid-pose. Unlike Catholic art with its symbolism, Piotrowska’s photographs seem, at first, to lack the keys to unlock their specific meanings. And yet, it is accurate to say that the meaning of the gestures is elusive only if the viewer is unfamiliar with referents of Piotrowska’s images, because she imbues her work with very specific meanings.

In the lower level of Le Bal, two series come into conversation: Self-Defense (2014–22) and Frowst, (2015–21). The former depicts women’s self-defense strategies against aggressors, while the latter explores family dynamics through reenactments of poses from a book about group therapy. But even before we learn of the photographs’ origins, the figures’ gestures are charged with an ambiguity that has an arresting power. In another series displayed on the ground floor, Shelter (2016–19), people make small, tent-like structures inside their domestic spaces. These photographs are exhibited alongside those of enclosures, such as zoos. In many of the Shelter images, the subjects hide in their play-forts; the tones of each flutter between childlike lightness and something more sinister yet undefined.

Critics and curators have described Piotrowska’s work as a mixture of photography and performance art, primarily because of how she uses theoretical research, often from feminist theory and psychotherapy, to choreograph her figures. But the performative element feels less important than how she employs it as a method for picture-making. Whether or not we know what her pictures are “about”—that is to say, what her theoretical or performative source materials are—the actions that her figures perform command attention. In his essay “Gestus” (1984), Jeff Wall, an artist known for his depictions of human gesture, discusses how his own work is “based on the representation of the body.” He writes: “In the medium of photography, this representation depends upon the construction of expressive gestures which can function as emblems.” Gesture, he offers, by way of definition, “means a pose or action which projects its meaning as a conventionalized sign.”

His thoughts—much like mine about Piotrowska—lead him to Baroque art. For Wall, the deeply imbued meanings from those earlier forms of European painting may no longer be available to contemporary artists. Industrialization and the mechanization of city life, he claims, have rendered our gestures “small.” But this smallness, he continues, “corresponds to our increased means of magnification in making and displaying images.” With photography, we no longer need the symbolic expressiveness of Gentileschi or Caravaggio; the camera can capture subtleties, depicting and transforming seemingly simple movements into significant emblems.

At Le Bal, Piotrowska also debuts a new series that at first glance may appear different from her earlier work. The images are large-scale prints in blurry black and white, evoking degraded memories. A close-up of a sweater and necklace worn by a woman. A candle burning on a table, behind it a bowl of fruit and some dishware. A vase or urn on a shelf with a framed photograph and, behind that, books. A child’s hand held by that of an adult, with a clock and some ceramic object in the background. All of these are details from negatives found by the artist, taken by her father before she was born. A bit like the protagonist of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up (1966), Thomas, the fashion photographer who enlarges a snapshot and obsesses over what he might have inadvertently captured, Piotrowska uses a telephoto lens to magnify particulars within each image—searching for proof, perhaps.

But of what? Even if we are given the context of their picture-making, they withhold their meaning. The “gesture” of these images is far more intrinsic to photography: it is their magnification. They become silent emblems—perhaps puzzling but nonetheless powerful. As is the case with her previous material, where Piotrowska deals with the silences that surround domestic violence and how we feel safe or unsafe in our homes, these new pictures, if not exactly baroque, are ideal for how they capture a “smallness” of photographic gestures. They represent the ways individuals claim control over their lives, even if their meaning remains elusive.

Joanna Piotrowska: Entre Nous is on view at Le Bal, Paris, through May 21, 2023.