When The Other Becomes One's Own

One of the main areas of Alicja Żebrowska's artistic interest is the taboo sphere, including the problems of gender and sexual identity. The photograph When The Other Becomes One's Own is part of a project dedicated to the issue of sex change. The artist views the subject in the light of a story of a specific person who ran the risk of taking a radical decision about their identity in spite of biological determinant. Żebrowska depicted her heroine in a classic, lying posture among glossy drapery. The key element of the composition is the mirror, in which the sitter is looking at her body and facing what, as the title says, has become “one's won”. The composition is a clear allusion to depictions of Venus with a mirror known from art history. Alicja Żebrowska clearly refers to the motif of nudity often recurrent in painting and deals with the stereotypical idea of beauty and the problem of self-acceptance by transsexual people.

Alicja Żebrowska (b.1956) – pursues sculpture, photography, performance; creates videos and video installations. Graduate of the Faculty of Arts at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin (1981) and the Department of Sculpture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (diploma in 1992 from Wander Bretoni's studio). Since 1996 has belonged to the Art Fort Association. Her art falls into the trend of critical art represented by artists who in the 1990s began to raise issues referring to the relation between an individual and society and the constellation of existing legal and moral standards.