YAGA

Hardcover

176 pages

1st Edition

2021

English and Polish

YAGA is a photo book about the idea of the emancipation of socially excluded women that the system finds inconvenient. It offers a subjective view of women and the inequality that exists even in the queer world, where men still have more space to tell their stories than non-heteronormative women, who seem to lose sight of it.

Baba Yaga is a common archetype in Slavic countries: it is about an old woman who lives alone in the forest, surrounded by an animated natural world, in which the ghosts of her ancestors manifest as black cats and old evil crows. (...) Baba Yaga, as the embodiment of patriarchal fears, brings to the fore issues of status, resources and norms that must be obeyed. The cabin in the Baba Yaga forest is perched on chicken feet, which symbolizes exclusion, being an image of isolation, loneliness, misery and poverty, being also a symbol of opposition and the emanation of revenge. potential. (excerpt from an essay by Agata Kalinowska)

Yaga constitutes an archetype of contemporary witch, but YAGA is, above all, an emancipatory idea. Agata Kalinowska’s first publication is a book on freedom, on non-heteronormative standards of attractiveness, the shame of age, and the deconstruction of the male-female myths that make up the system. It is also a work on the relationship between beauty and female identity imposed by society. It is about the liberating power of a conscious choice to be excluded, to function outside the limits of the norms and the established cultural context, about the isolation that allows one to exist on their own terms.

Agata Kalinowska - photographer, writer and waitress affiliated with BWA Wrocław, Ośrodek Postaw Twórczych (Center for Creative Arts), and the Wrocław bar scene. His interests include the experiences of the precariat, which he documents on his blog relativelyhuman.blogspot.com. Agata’s work has been presented in Poland and abroad. His exhibition Just Don’t Fall in Love, held at the Miejsce przy Miejscu gallery in Wrocław in 2015 and curated by Łukasz Rusznica, was very popular. His SCUM mannequin was shortlisted for the Kassel Dummy Award in 2018 and reached the final of the Gomma Scholarship 2019. YAGA, was released by BWA Wrocław in August 2021.