Enclosure XLI, 2019
Enclosure XLII, 2019
Silver gelatin hand prints, each 130 x 160 cm
Two large-scale photographs show enclosures at Munich’s Hellabrunn Zoo. There is no animal in sight, but the presence of one is suggested: here a hint of the glass through which visitors view the zoo animals, there a toy that could have been dropped by either an animal or a person. The structures are made by humans, not chosen by animals themselves. Piotrowska’s images seem like relics of a bygone era. Enclosure XLII shows the enclosure housing of a polar bear, now one of the world’s most endangeredanimal species. The photographs express an impermanence that appeals to our sense of responsibility toward other life forms. They also call on a human social identity that has been rocked to its core time and again over the course of history. Guided by a racist ideology, the Nazis used violence in an effort to redraw the line between those who were allowed to be considered “human” and those who were not. In this way, Piotrowska’s vacant enclosures also serve as a reminder that all modes of coexistence are based on organizational systems that follow certain ideologies.
