| If you're in Paris before 17 May — come see the show.
Alltagsfantasie is at Circulation(s)! Festival, organized by the collective Fetart and held at Centquatre-Paris, 5 rue Curial, 75019 Paris, France.
And I'm coming back 9–18 April, and I'm ready to make new meaningful connections.
Write to me! ma...@joannaszproch.com |
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| | ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
Circulation(s) is Europe's leading festival for emerging photography, now in its 16th edition. This year: 26 artists, 15 nationalities — diverse and somehow coherent.
Behind it: Fetart, an all-women curatorial collective, and a whole production team. It is the highest quality of expertise — artistic, intellectual, logistical, and constructional labor, and it showed in every detail.
Everyone contributed in a very horizontal way. Reaching the public was our mutual goal, and only by opening new doors can we do so — and this festival does just that. That's what made it special! |
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| | WHY I'M GOING BACK
The first trip was for the opening — for the public, for the performance, for everything that happens when a group of fantastic individuals shares one goal. I gave everything to it.
This second trip has a slightly different intention. This time, I want to meet people in a more private, one-on-one way to get to know each other and see where there is real resonance.
I'm looking for people of influence — activists, journalists, curators, anyone working at the intersection of art, politics, and social change. People thinking about feminist art, art advocacy, mothers in art, care as labor, local solutions, and organic collaboration. |
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| | The best things I've learned came from conversations that felt more like sharing secrets than professional networking. I'm interested in more of those.
Paris is not something I can do often — women artists are structurally underfunded, and this is not just my story. To break this, we can support each other — not necessarily through money, but by exchanging knowledge, contacts, and trust.
So I hope this finds you, and that we manage to have a coffee. If that sounds like you or someone you know, write to me or connect us.
Embodied contact is the most effective way to bring change. |
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| | THE OPENING
Lena, my daughter, and I have worked together before, but this time it was more intentional. She suggested it herself—she wanted to braid my hair. Before we began decorating the wall, she stood behind me and braided my hair. It was quiet. It was synchronized.
The gold stars on pink are from the book. For us, they symbolize the space where a mother and daughter connect safely, where they find strength for the female struggle. It’s also about our horizontal bond—she grew up watching me create; she is a continuation, but entirely on her own terms. I am not the authority here. We complete each other.
During the performance, we also photographed live on film, the way we always photograph together. People could watch our process unfold. They could experience it, not just see the result. |
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Then, Carine Dolek — one of the Fetart founders, with the same Polish roots — whose presence gave our collaboration a special resonance. We share the perspective of the Polish cultural diaspora in Europe, and the understanding of why it is sometimes so difficult to create as a woman in Poland, despite our vocation and our own way of seeing.
I gave a speech about women in art and mothers, and she translated it into French. One of the Polish Heritage institutions had rejected our application to support the mother-daughter performance, calling the project "biographical, therefore irrelevant." We answered that.
After the speech, I handed out vulva cookies I had baked for the occasion. We didn't just come to finish the installation — we spent real time together, all 26 of us. Those encounters will last, and I'm looking forward to our next meetup, hopefully in Arles. |
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The moment she rejects the role of martyr, she becomes ungovernable. She refuses to believe that for a woman, there is no better way to live than to endure.
She is alive. She creates. She celebrates. The crown does not fall from our heads.
Don't just empower me. Pay me!
Art isn't a hobby. Care isn't a virtue. Both are labor — and from labor, one should be able to live.
Life begins when the CREATRESS brings it into the world.
→ Read the full opening text |
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| | COLLECT
👉 Wandering Soul (2019/2025) 👉 Lusciousness (2019/2025) from Alltagsfantasie are available as limited editions through Fox Edition — signed, numbered, with a certificate.
THE BOOK Alltagsfantasie is also available as a photobook at the festival and online. Something you can hold, return to, and spend time with — not an image on a screen, but an object. A small, tactile piece of my universe you can take with you. |
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