Diana Lelonek

Diana Lelonek - S/T (from the Barborka series)

Technique: Collage on paper

Artist Biography: Diana Lelonek is a Polish contemporary artist, born in 1988 in the city of Poznan. She graduated from the Faculty of Multimedia Communication at the Poznan University of Art, where she studied photography, and later obtained her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at the same university. Currently working at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Lelonek is dedicated to exploring the relationships between humans and other species. His projects are critical responses to the processes of overproduction, unlimited growth and our approach to the environment. He uses photography, living matter and found objects to create works that are interdisciplinary and often appear at the interface between art and science.Lelonek's work has been exhibited at several international biennials, festivals and group exhibitions, such as the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art in Oldenburg, the Kunstraum Niederösterreich in Vienna, the Temporary Gallery in Cologne, the Tallinn Art Hall, the Culturescapes Festival in Basel, the Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne, the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art, the Kunstmuseum Bonn and the Tinguely Museum in Basel.With his work, Lelonek invites the public to question their relationship with the natural world and to consider new forms of coexistence. In his work, he addresses issues such as biodiversity, deforestation, urbanization and climate change, exploring how these phenomena affect ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.

 

Diana Lelonek presents a series of collages made in collaboration with the Silesian Museum. Archival photographs from the early days of mining in Silesia were combined with present-day photographs of defunct Silesian mines, contemporary and archival photographs of glaciers, as well as drawings and photographs from old books on botany, biology and geology. The collages combine various periods and histories: of local communities, ancient coal forests, large horsetails and mosses, and contemporary endangered ecosystems. For all of them, a given moment is decisive for the continuation of the local community and its deep transgeological connections between species. Here, the deep history and eras of humans and non-humans merge, creating a closed and complex cycle between two distant epochs of the great species extinction, intertwined in the process of coal mining and burning. Barbórka is a project that, on the one hand, deals with the mining traditions of Silesia and, on the other hand, shows how nature is reborn. "For me, the collages also possess a private, personal dimension, because I myself come from Dabrowa Górnicza and grew up in the industrial landscape of the Silesian Voivodeship. Fragments of the industrial architecture of the steelworks in Katowice, where my parents worked, also appear in the collages. After the collapse of the Polish People's Republic, the steelworks were privatized and many people lost their jobs. Neoliberal capitalism caused many dramas among the local community in my region. The current challenge of the upcoming energy transformation is also not planned responsibly, without taking into account the interests of both local communities and the ecosystem." Diana Lelonek