Ligia Popławska (1994, Poland) is a photographer based in Antwerp, Belgium. Working at the intersection of art and science, her artistic practice is focused on analysing parallels between senses and memory, emotional states and conditions of the Post―Anthropocene. She explores fields like psychology, neuroscience, ecology or biology to find basis for her speculative photographic storytelling. Ligia holds an MA in Photography from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and a BA in Art History from the University of Gdańsk.
About Fading Senses – words by Ligia Popławska:
‘Fading Senses’ is a research project and a photographic essay where I reflect on sensory deprivation and environmental anxiety. Solastalgia is a relatively new concept for understanding the implications of the loss of ecosystems on our mental and emotional health. Described as an earth-related state, it reflects the zeitgeist of our time. As an increasing problem in societies, it manifests itself in a feeling of dislocation, a lived experience of the loss of the present. A perspective of a fading world and a state of fading-away is close to sensory deprivation. Absence of senses, one of the biggest human fears, can lead to intra-mental perception, echolocation and memory flashbacks. As I have temporarily lost one of the senses in the past, this deprivation became my intuitive leading guide, which I have applied to the working method and to the visual language. Being strongly concerned about solastalgia’s impact, I asked myself, what happens if we lose our senses? How does it affect our emotional health and memory, in the times of multispecies extinction? Using photography, I create a mental image of an ungraspable sensation to underline human disconnection from the natural habitat.
