Like Country, Like Love
Collection:UAL Art Collection
Date: 2021
Artist: Anna Drozd (Polish)
Dimensions:
29 x 22.5 x 3cm (box)
17 x 23cm (book)
Medium: Photo book and presentation box
Object number: UAC 1042
DescriptionAnna studied BA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication. Set in the Polish countryside, in an undefined space of reality, sexual fantasy, autobiography, constructed narrative and memory, this experimental short film shares a young girl's encounters with ‘love’.
Made against the backdrop of fundamental women's rights violations in Poland, which echoed worldwide in 2020 and exposed a severely ideologically divided country, this short film along with a supplementary photobook containing a body of work under the title 'Like Country, Like Love' are a testimony to the toxic romantic relationship tropes in Eastern Europe's highly patriarchal and heteronormative culture.
The snippets of fragmented still and moving imagery, supplemented with poetic narrative and critical text, are clarified as the traumatised inner world of the female character. Deconstructing her own learned helplessness and compliance with the existing culture of silence around persisting trans-generational and problematic male-female power dynamics through a critical female gaze, the highly self-aware narrator asserts power despite her powerless cultural identity; conveying the shapeshifting reality of today's Eastern European woman. Acknowledging the burning need for progress in Eastern European identity, this project ultimately poses the question: How do we collectively find an authentic relationship to violence and begin to move towards a place of love?
Made against the backdrop of fundamental women's rights violations in Poland, which echoed worldwide in 2020 and exposed a severely ideologically divided country, this short film along with a supplementary photobook containing a body of work under the title 'Like Country, Like Love' are a testimony to the toxic romantic relationship tropes in Eastern Europe's highly patriarchal and heteronormative culture.
The snippets of fragmented still and moving imagery, supplemented with poetic narrative and critical text, are clarified as the traumatised inner world of the female character. Deconstructing her own learned helplessness and compliance with the existing culture of silence around persisting trans-generational and problematic male-female power dynamics through a critical female gaze, the highly self-aware narrator asserts power despite her powerless cultural identity; conveying the shapeshifting reality of today's Eastern European woman. Acknowledging the burning need for progress in Eastern European identity, this project ultimately poses the question: How do we collectively find an authentic relationship to violence and begin to move towards a place of love?
