Aneta Kempa is a Polish artist, who currently resides in Swansea. Graduating in July 2014 with a BA in Photography in the Arts from Swansea College of Art, UWTSD, Kempa is lens-based artist who is working with various photographic formats, audio and video. For last three year Kempa was engaged in an exploration of memory and passing of the time. Kempa’s recent work is based on her own grandmother’s dementia.
Artist Statement
Time. Before I can name it, it is gone. However, it is always present, although it dies each second. A timeless chronology. A mythical serpent still eating its tail.
Time passes and we are powerless; we pass and are passed at the same time. I look at photographs and I know that whatever I am looking at has already happened.
What is left is the awareness that this loss is the necessary condition under which photographs may be taken. Since I cannot even experience time authentically, is it possible to arrive at its physical image?
‘Do you remember me…?’ is a portrait of my grandmother. Memory remains were picked up from the ruins of dementia and elderly age. The remains turn into my personal dialogue, my quiet hope that maybe I am still somewhere out there in her memories. It is the request for myself that I never forget… Suddenly every detail becomes important: the movement of her hand, every glance, the fragility of the moment, which never will return.
Pictures become videos.
To remember everything she will forget in a moment. See the destruction of forgetfulness …
To see the world she is living in…
Website: http://www.anetakempaphotography.net
Blog about recent project: http://www.portraitofher.wordpress.com
Jane Phillips Award 