Five interconnected art series revolve around the theme of the contemporary labor system and society, built on the compulsion of productivity.
The machine, being a woman (“Perpetua Femina”), speaks of the uninterrupted work of nurturing, domestic, and emotional labor, which, despite its fundamental role, often remains invisible and unappreciated.
The Hydroza collective’s project is part of the feminist art movement, referring to the ideas of Silvia Federici and Byung-Chul Han in “The Burnout Society.” Exhausted women create an exhausted society.
Hydroza is a collective of visual artists working from the medium of photography, who base their practice on texts by contemporary feminist scholars and theorists, translating these into artistic expression. The collective was formed in 2022 as a result of the Nikon NOOR Academy in Warsaw, mentored by Olga Kravets, Tanya Habjouqa, and Andrea Bruce from NOOR Images—an international photography agency focused on documentary and visual storytelling.
The starting point for the collective’s first project was Astrida Neimanis’ manifesto, Hydrofeminism: Or, Becoming a Body of Water. Hydroza’s debut series, Who Will Cry Last? explored the ambivalent nature of water as a source of life, memory, violence, and oppression. The project was presented in various iterations: at Pracownia Wschodnia (Warsaw, 2023), DOMIE (Poznań, 2023), Biuro Wystaw (Warsaw, 2024, as part of the exhibition Watermark, curated by Paweł Brylski and Kwiaciarnia Grafiki), and, in summary form, at Galeria u Agatki (Wrocław, 2024).
In 2023, the collective was invited by curators Zuzanna Mielczarek and Mateusz Włodarek, along with the Gdańsk City Culture Institute and Gdańsk City Gallery, to participate in Narracje, the oldest multimedia and site-specific installation festival in Gdańsk. The artists’ performance Hug the Water was available to the public in November 2024 during the 15th edition of the festival, held in the Gdańsk district of Niedźwiednik. Curator Magdalena Komborska-Łączna also invited the collective to take part in the Water Reconstructions exhibition at the Academic Design Center in Łódź, as part of the Art & Design Water Life 2024 festival.
The collective is working on a new project based on Silvia Federici’s text, Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons.
