Warsaw Triptych

The Warsaw Triptych project was developed from a personal concept by Natalia Jóźwiak and Sebastian Piotrowicz.

In using dance as their medium, the authors of the Warsaw Triptych were inspired by WWII-vintage photography, with the framework of their composition cast as a film etude - making the Triptych a unique conversation among these three art forms.

The three separate cinematic etudes enter into relationships, while holding on to their distinctness. Some may be abstracted from reality and focused around emotions or traumas, or drawn from evocative quotes from poetry or the nation’s history preserved in the photos. Some may dip into the flow of events, then coalesce around human relationships being tested in the harsh reality of war, yet others being simply inspired by the visual textures, silhouettes and images of human figures peering out from these candid shots.

What binds the Warsaw Triptych together is the symbolism extracted by its authors from wartime images by Jerzy „Chojna” Chojnacki, a photojournalist with Poland’s Home Army’s North Group. The authors have drafted this symbolism into a structural role, threading the sequence of images comprising the Triptych.