Piotr Policht: ‘Sparks’ is very different, in terms of the theme, from your earlier photography projects. Why did you decide to tell the story of the war in Ukraine in 2014?
Wiktoria: The topics I choose to work on are those that move me in some way, which make me want to learn more. I want to get my information first hand, to base my stance on the experiences and stories told by people who were directly affected by a certain phenomenon. I never planned to create art ‘about war’. On the other hand, all of us are heavily influenced by history books, stories about past conflicts told by our grandmas, so the topic was close to my heart. The war in Ukraine is a very current thing, also it’s so close, in Europe.
When the Euromaidan protests erupted I was in China, in a place very foreign and new. I felt quite good there, living, in a way, outside the system, almost like an expat but without conveniences. News about the fighting and the beginning of war reached me very late because all such information is blocked by the Chinese government’s censorship. When I found out what was going on, I felt a great anger and I couldn’t accept the fact that war could start just like that, here or there, that it can just hit people who all of a sudden find themselves in a new, tragic situation.
I strongly empathised with people burdened by the trauma of war, and I decided to talk to them about it –to build an image of this conflict but also of war as a phenomenon, history repeating itself.
The focus point of the Sparks project, as well as all of my past artistic projects, is a person in relation with their surroundings, understood as cultural context, history, social changes, but also the place we live and inhabit, the Earth. I don’t choose my topics intentionally, so they’re quite varied, I am guided by my feelings, intuition and empathy.