ALEKSANDRA SZLĘK

If

The artwork is a visual study of memory, loss, and an intrusive psychological mechanism known as „counterfactual thinking”, in other words: „what if”.


The projection integrates into a space of closed and half-open cabinets – a place meant for storing, but also for concealing what is unsaid. Within the work,it becomes a vessel for domestic secrets and invisible barriers. The source material for the textual layer is a letter written to a loved one after her passing. Key words extracted from the text circulate, blend, and continuously rearrange into new, hypothetical scenarios. It is an attempt to replay the past, to search for alternative endings, and to grasp the moment where the course of events could have been altered. This construct gradually reveals a single truth: regardless of the complexity of the retrospective speculations made and words spoken, every single path leads to the exact same, ultimate point.

The continuous horizontal line serves as a visual record of silence, finality, and helplessness in the face of the irreversible.