Collection

The remnants of the Old Książ Castle in Wałbrzych, photographed by Kalicka, were rebuilt in the 18^th century into Romantic ruins. This was a practice in the Romantic era of building stylized artificial ruins, where lovers might stroll in the moonlight. For the artist, this phenomenon has a metaphorical dimension of building foundations on ashes and makes a symbolic allusion to New Athens (1745) by the priest Benedykt Chmielowski, which is the point of departure for her photographic cycle with the same title. In Chmielowski’s encyclopaedia one lie follows another, and truth cannot be definitively separated from fiction. Nowadays, the fake ruins of the Old Książ Castle, subjected to the destructive influence of time for several intervening centuries, have once again turned into “real” ruins. Kalicka also manipulates the truth by subjecting the photograph to digital intervention: the artificial gleam and romantic luminescence were superimposed on the picture using graphics software.

Photographer, filmmaker, collage artist. Graduate of the Faculty of Photography at the Łódź Film School. Kalicka often photographs improvised or staged situations, much like theatrical productions. She creates photographic tableaux vivants, presentations of canonical motifs from art history brought to life, in which the artist herself poses along with her friends. She alludes to literary and anthropological texts in her works, which also include numerous symbols, self-quotations, and mythological, religious and pop-culture references. She eagerly mixes orders and registers, incorporating kitsch and the aesthetics of intentional error. She uses stylized form to raise contemporary themes associated with identity and its stereotypical perception. She lives and works in Kraków.