Otherworlds (2023 – ongoing) is an investigation into the artist’s personal history and family, as well as a field report of a fascinating journey suspended between reality and fiction, the ordinary and the oneiric. The worlds of past and present coexist in parallel, beyond the structures of time, intertwining in the place that connects them: the ancient Silesian village of Sandowitz, now Żędowice in Poland, around which several generations of the artist’s family gravitate. At the center of this microcosm stands a 19th-century mill, once powered by the waters of the Mała Panew River, along with the now-vanished village community. Orłowska evokes the mythical setting of the mill’s childhood, which remained in her family’s ownership for 120 years. The artist has listened to many stories recounting the site’s past life. In this realm, one could shape their own reality, employing strength and ingenuity while drawing on the available “analog technologies,” adapting them to individual needs. The rhythms of life were governed both by natural cycles and by the inner workings of the watermill.
Many of the works are characterized by a distinctive reddish hue. This red derives from iron deposits permeating the area surrounding the artist’s family home, including a stream that springs from a source in the nearby forest. As early as the Iron Age, the region encompassing Żędowice was a metallurgical area, rich in bog iron ore from which metal was extracted, and dotted with forests that provided raw material for charcoal production. Iron is not only the primary component of steel—used by Orłowska in some of her recent works—but also a fundamental component of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood, giving it a crucial role in the development of life on Earth. Orłowska prints photographs onto fabric and then dyes the material by immersing it in an iron-rich suspension that transforms the flow into a rust-red tone, thereby “developing” new visual properties. As the material is cut, torn, combined, sewn, woven, and draped, the photographic medium is once again transformed within her artistic practice.
Anna Orlowska, Otherwords, 2026
installation views, mixed media
courtesy the artist and Quartz Studio
photo Beppe Giardino
