TOKYO-2017 Nature / Pets

Domestic Creatures

  • Prize
    Silver in Nature/Pets
  • Photographer
    'Mal Gomma' Malgorzata Arciszewska

Domestic Creatures This is an artistic research focused on the relationship between a child and her animals. But what binds them together is the house they live in. The creatures are not completely wild but neither are they fully tame. They live a life based on instinct and without social rules until they are trained. In this story everything is back to front : the child is trained by the animals and becomes their pet; they become her guardians and protectors. Animals are a symbolic form borrowed from old Polish folk tales in which the world was ruled by them and humans needed to understand their place in it. The idea of this project is derived from my personal childhood experience , when I spent a lot of time walking alone in a deep, dark forest accompanied only by my dog and cat. I learned how to understand them without words. This aspect of an unspoken/silent conversation gave me a magical background for emotions that a conventional social life would only supress. Only loneliness can expose such emotions. “The hardest thing to listen to – your instincts, your human personal intuition – always whispers …, never shouts.” Steven Spielberg