Daugh­ter is Aneta Grzeszykowska’s latest photographic series. This time, the artist con­ceals her­self behind a mask depic­ting her own face at the age of four­teen. This act of appropriation produces unset­tling con­sequen­ces: the artist becomes her daughter’s sister and peer, her husband’s daugh­ter, and her own parents’ grand­daugh­ter. Biological time, as well as familial and psychological relation­ships, become disrup­ted. Grzeszykow­ska her­self iden­tifies an existen­tial paradox at the heart of this gesture: “The hybrid I con­struct in the Daugh­ter series, com­posed of the old and young body of a single person, visualizes the dis­sonance in which we are trapped—an ambivalent com­bination of a child damaged by adul­thood and an adult damaged by childhood.”

Here, the artist develops her radical, existen­tial exploration of iden­tity, femininity, and family relation­ships. The mask on Grzeszykowska’s face disrupts the idyl­lic, pain­terly quality of the scenes, introducing a shiver of ontological unease.

Daugh­ter is also a sub­ver­sive con­tinuation of Grzeszykowska’s celebrated Mama series, boldly chal­len­ging visual and cul­tural clichés sur­roun­ding mother­hood. This fur­ther camera-​based per­for­mance con­tains a strong critical dimen­sion. The cul­tural fascination with youth and expec­tations sur­roun­ding the appearance of the female body are given a brutally literal materialisation here. The figure created by the artist resem­bles the victim of an experiment in biology that has not quite gone accor­ding to plan: the head does not fit the body, and, moreover, it is blind—the mask Grzeszykow­ska wears has artificial eyes. Her existence is reduced to posing, yet she does so blin­dly. The whole series thus becomes a kind of beautiful tragicomedy, in which an escape into the world of human fan­tasies and projec­tions turns out to be a mul­tilayered trap.

The exhibition is com­plemen­ted by life-​size black dolls sewn by the artist her­self. They appear in the gal­lery space in a new role—as spec­tators. Their presence heigh­tens the grotesque effect. The absor­bing, naturalistic photographs become part of a theatrical game. What mat­ters is not only the images them­selves, but also the relation­ships they provoke. The reality created by Grzeszykow­ska is becoming an increasin­gly coherent and total whole—a world in which bodies are little more than stage props, while the rebel­lious human “self” deliberately steps out of character.