October 2016 Artist in Residency: DOMINIKA JACKULIAKOVA

Dominika Jackuliakova Janek's Pallet, Steinmetzmeister Company, Traiskirchen, 2015

This month, we are welcoming Dominika Jackuliakova from Slovakia. Dominika lives and works in Bratislava and Lučenec.

She studied photography at the Josef Vydra School of Applied Arts in Bratislava (high school) and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (Department of Photography and New Media, head of the studio: Miro Švolík) with a Masters Degree in 2015. She studied as an exchange student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (Department of Art and Photography, head of the studio: Martin Guttman).

In her work she focuses on analogue photography, un-manipulated found images of reality and crossovers between the medium of photography and other media such as sculpture or installation. Her present practice could be defined by her search for human interventions in ordinary things around us. She published her first photo book from the Garden project with cooperation of Apart Label (SK) in January 2014.

Dominika will be in the lab preparing a new book containing her project entitled "Lom."

Read our Q + A with Dominika below!

Through your work, it seems you are integrating the found scenarios you photograph with your own material and spatial explorations. How do the found scenarios inform the story you wish to tell with your images?

I use photography for its capacity to select from the real world around us. The medium of photography is much more complex nowadays, but, in this case I am traditionalist, and I tend to generalize. In my practice (that uses essential means of expression related to the medium, I especially refer here to B&W processes), selection is very important as it facilitates the access to the chosen topic, which often concentrates on a certain object of interest. In 'The Garden' series that is a plant while in the series 'Lom' that is a stone as it serves to represent matter. In this manner, I can obtain a much deeper connection to the subjects of my photography, and I can move easily from the nonliving to the (significance of) living (the human) without directly capturing the latter in a photograph. This experimental method of 'picking up' found scenarios works the best for my practice and it unveils much more about human nature than the portrait photography I used to do in the past. But I still cannot completely quit working with portraits!

Your work often explores the relationship between human and environment. How does the way you install your work inform the way the viewer negotiates your images?

I am very interested in the intersection between the medium of photography and other media, such as sculpture or installation. With my growing interest in the relationship between human and environment, I began introducing a new dimension within my installation practice – thus, I started developing site-specific installations based on found objects in the surrounding environment. It is like a game for me and I am always asking myself when I should photograph an object and when I should just simply pick it up and put it on display as part of my work.

What are your plans for your residency at LATITUDE? Do you plan to explore Chicago by camera

During this residency, I plan to work on my photo book. The photo book is based on works I did for my MA graduation exhibition. The main subject of interest is represented here by the variation in the qualities of stones. Usually, when presenting these works, I chose for display only a small number of images that explore the intersection between photography and sculpture/installation (I use black and white prints that I made myself in the darkroom, stretched with paper tape). In the book, I would like to include the entire series and to add some text that would help readers to better understand the story behind. And yes, I would like to include some photographs from Chicago, as well! I spent my last summer in Chicago, but as I could not concentrate on photographing back then, I plan to visit a few spots in the city with my camera this time.