FOTODOK x WORM: Fragmented Memories
“Fragmented Memories” is the most recent project developed as a part of the “Unrealized Futures, Abandoned Pasts” artistic research venture.
It explores the influence of the territorial changes after the Second World War in Poland on the Polish people’s sense of belonging. Post-war, the USSR and Germany created new borders and forever changed the lives of the Borderlands Poles. Forced to move by their communist government or deeply traumatized by the bloody Ukrainian fight for independence, millions fled from the Eastern Borderlands to the “Recovered” * Territories on the Western side of the country. The previous German inhabitants of these lands were pushed out of their homes so they could be taken over by the newcomers. People on both sides of the conflict left their pasts behind and scrapped their previously imagined futures.
The artist explores this erasure of life and disconnect from one’s roots caused by displacement in “Fragmented Memories.” Looking into her family’s past made Justyna wonder how these negated futures, abandoned pasts, and her family history echo in her own life and perhaps in the lives of people with similar family histories.
In “Fragmented Memories” Justyna focused on the history of her maternal grandmother, born in present-day Ukraine, in a small village Kobaki, at the border with Romania. The artist comes from Wrocław, a German city until 1945, near where her family settled after the Second World War. And this project is a way to look back at where she comes from and collect the breadcrumbs of stories her grandmother left behind. These prints are based on images taken from the Polish National Archives and show the daily life of the region. On each of the 3 layers, parts are missing, to represent how the distance, time, and trauma distort the image of the past.