- Venue
- Shoreditch Town Hall Basement
- Location
- London
“My biggest fear is losing my mind” –
Polish-born Ania Dabrowska delivers a delectable insight into the thoughts and feelings of participants intending to donate their brains to science. Using a plethora of media – namely photography, but also installation and audio, she endeavours to interrogate the viewer’s moral and social constructs, thrusting notions of a finite existence and the potential for regeneration onto the viewer.
Dabrowska’s past works have been notably more abstract; her candid photography and figurative compositions reminiscent of Cindy Sherman’s ‘Unedited Film Stills’. Whilst her later work could still be construed as candid, they are more thoughtful; decisively conveying a narrative, abstract only in their conceptual integrity. Afterlife and belief systems are questioned in her provocative and unabashed staging of her current works and subsequent text from the donors themselves.
The exhibition space is hidden away in the Shoreditch Town hall basement. The sensory journey begins with the descent of a set of stairs to reach the entrance of the space. The narrow, uneven stonework leads to a narrow external corridor and the door to the exhibition. Inside, the low-lit passage is almost as much of the artwork as the artwork itself. The mottled, par-painted and subsequently peeling, flaking walls resemble a tapestry of history not only metaphorically but physically. Upon entering, one is immediately struck by a feeling of familiarity; the tactile structure feels more like a Victorian house than a brain bank and amongst the poly-filler and raw plugs, the shedding skins envelop the photographs.
The exhibition is funded by the Wellcome Trust; Founded by Henry Wellcome, it supports projects which engage the public with biomedical science. However, this is not just simply a contribution to science. Dabrowska’s deeply moving, heart-wrenching record of these individuals implores us to consider them through an entirely sentimental lens.
Prior to attending the show, I had begun to cultivate a deep interest in Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia after two of my grandparents were diagnosed with the disease. Medical advancements to find the cure for such diseases and subsequent research that could control the onset of genetic mutations are baffling to me and I hoped that amongst other things, this exhibition may be informative to my practice.
Dabrowska introduces the individuals one by one, presented as portrait photographs with a short biography and introduction from the individual. The colour images, spot-lit, present the until-now anonymous donors as brave and proud. The audio is tantalisingly visceral and I felt a deep emotional connection with each of the donors. The audio which is played throughout the labyrinthine corridors echoes defiantly, and draws viewers deeper through the passages as the individuals’ voices tell their own stories; of their lives, their loved ones, their successes and their hopes for the future.
The audio which is played throughout the space is beautifully composed, pertaining to each person’s personal experiences and divided into respective chapters for each of the donors. Using classical instruments such as pianos and stringed instruments Dabrowska, along with composer Gaetano Serra create an unequivocally beautiful, thought provoking and emotional discourse.
Exploring further the anatomy of the space, I discovered new rooms. Aptly named, is the ‘Lacunae’ series. This is the name given to empty space or a missing part and incorporates shapes shrouded in dust cloths that become lost in the vast space of the rubble. “For You My Love, To Remember Me By”; is a series of appropriated images, hand written names and dates, intended to prompt memory. These personal memoirs are scattered around and throughout the exhibition, set out to infiltrate the sterility of the space whilst in stark contrast to, “That Moment When You Forgot Your Best Friend’s Name” – colour xerographic prints of medical micrographs, arranged in specific and numerical order.
“… the un-specified histories and memories that are gone… like furniture pieces that are covered with sheets in old houses to be protected, but end up being redundant, ghostly forms – never used again.”
Found objects such as medical freeze boxes – a typically sterile item – used to store a freshly harvested brain are juxtaposed against an entire room of floating doilies. It’s clear that this is meant not only to represent the physical shape of a brain but also a ghostly spectre; it may also be pertinent to consider the synonymy of knitting and crocheting with the elderly. The donors are aged between 84 and 100, and like the lost art of fine needle-work these people may soon be gone.
The intersecting rooms operate to induce a sense of deja-vu, another appropriation of senility. I found myself wandering the rooms over and over; and I found it a little upsetting. In a large room at the back of the exhibition, hanging duraclear prints in black and white swing above head-height. Images of men in uniform during the war, a couple cooing over a newborn baby, a children’s birthday party and a young man at his graduation. But some of the images are shattered, disjointed; the young girl sitting on a bench is alone, her siblings edited from the image and the third young boy from a trio of brothers posing for a photo seems translucent, faded out. A series of over-exposed images mounted onto the walls appear to be personal photos of a wedding – “It Really Was Beautiful” portrays the couple in the image smiling out from their chromatically impaired frame.
Most unsettling of all was a small room leading off the main corridor. Upon entering, a pungent smell entered my nostrils and lingered all around. I’d noticed strange apparatus installed in the walls of the basement and was immediately reminded of similar wrought iron ‘drawers’ I saw on a tour around Auschwitz I had taken a year earlier. Part of the audio contains the voice of a man recalling the smell of burning flesh during the war; I couldn’t help but wonder if the artist had intended this empty chamber to be a living representation of the possibility of death.
It’s been three years in the making and is more than simply an exhibition. ‘Mind Over Matter’ is a significant advance in the combined understanding of medical knowledge and humanistic values. Dabrowska assimilates elements of science and sentimentality, forging a concise and articulate narrative. The space is fascinating – a metaphor within a metaphor, a microcosm of an actual brain. And hidden in its depths, Dabrowska incorporates the fundamental elements to make a powerful and illustrious show.
