MARIANNE ET KATARZYNA WASOWSKA

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En attendant la neige

Biographie

Marianne Wasowska (1988) is Franco-Polish. She studied Ethnology and Photography in Mexico, Poland, then in France, where she finally joined the ENSP of Arles, from which she graduated in 2014. She currently lives in Mexico, where she is attending the Programma para Artistas Soma.
Katarzyna Wasowska (1990) is Marianne's cousin. Polish, she graduated in Photography (University of Poznan, Grand Prix Photo Diploma Awards 2019) and in Psychology (Poznan Institute of Psychology). She has exhibited several times in Poland and in Braga, Portugal. She is currently an assistant tutor at the School of Fine Arts in Szczecin.
Marianne and Katarzyna were finalists for the Women Photographers Grant in 2019.

Présentation

"En attendant la neige" is a project about Polish migration to South America, principally to Brazil and Argentina.
It comes from a desire to shed light on a little-known aspect of the colonisation of the Americas. In Central Europe, the conquest of these new lands was the subject of persuasive publicity campaigns which lauded the “colonial adventure” as a means of social ascension, addressing mainly the poorer populations of workers and peasants, fragilised by successive wars. The real purpose of these invitations was to recruit workers capable of constructing the modern dream of these societies in full industrial expansion. These workers should be white and “civilised”, as opposed to the indigenous population.
Their descendants recount that, once arrived, they worked tirelessly to prepare for the winter, without realising that there would be no winter.