"News from Home" at Galerie Derouillon in Paris brings together Biraaj Dodiya and Cezary Poniatowski in a compelling exploration of the interplay between body, landscape, and the emotional resonance of space.
Drawing its title from Chantal Akerman's seminal film, the exhibition examines how our environments—whether intimate or public—become vessels for personal and collective histories, emotions, and traumas. Both artists probe the question of what renders a space familiar and how, through our experiences, we leave behind visible and invisible traces within these spaces.
Dodiya's works, a mix of large canvases and intricate installations, evoke landscapes that verge on collapse—ruins in the process of becoming. Her practice, marked by excavation and layering, positions her paintings as palimpsests, reflecting both political undertones and personal introspection. The "torso paintings" offer a more intimate confrontation, while her sculptural pieces—termed "plank compositions"—extend these landscapes into three-dimensional forms, reminding viewers of the delicate intersection between architecture and the human body.
On the other hand, Poniatowski's work delves into domestic spaces charged with political memory. Using everyday materials like carpets and polystyrene that hark back to Poland before the fall of the Eastern Bloc, his bas-reliefs function as skins peeled from the subconscious of these environments. In his pieces, viewers are invited to experience a Kafkaesque unease, where the very walls and objects seem to watch and listen, capturing the anxiety and disquiet of an unsettled world. Together, Dodiya and Poniatowski construct a dialogue that underscores how space, time, and memory intertwine, urging us to navigate the collapsing structures and build new homes from the remnants.
