Jeśli/If

The photographic series Jeśli/If by Monika Libera is a form of documentation of a journey undertaken by the artist as she comes to terms with the intimate experience of illness. The central motif is a woman’s wig, presented in various everyday settings: from seasonal landscapes, through humorous scenes involving animals, to intimate frames in which the object enters into a relationship with the artist herself and those closest to her. The result is a surreal, highly evocative series of images in which a prosthetic device used during illness is, in a sense, personified and detached from its function, taking part in situations that may never have actually occurred.

A prop associated with illness, functioning as a symbol of absence, comes to life across the subsequent frames—set into motion, suspended in mid-air, chaotically tousled by the wind, as if driven by an invisible force. The performative and affirmative gesture of throwing the wig becomes a symbolic act of restoring presence and a method through which the artist’s personal catharsis unfolds in relation to her experience of cancer. The fundamental, existential function of art is played out within the concrete space of lived experience.

The series Jeśli/If is formally rooted in the conventions of documentary social photography. However, the artist’s performative intervention brings it closer to works from art history such as Katarzyna Kozyra’s Olympia or Hannah Wilke’s Intra-Venus, in which photography functions as a neutral medium documenting a conceptual reflection on illness and mortality.

The radical withdrawal of the artist from the frame, symbolised by the floating prop, enables the viewer to identify with her personal experience. It creates a symbolic, empty space that can be filled with one’s own analogous, mortal body.

Author: Aneta Grzeszykowska

Credits: Monika Libera, from the series Jeśli/If, 2025

Monika Libera (b. 1976) is a photographer based in Szczecin, Poland. She studied photography and sociology. Her work is rooted in conceptual and socially engaged photography, exploring the body, illness, and community. She focuses on intimacy, care, and relational presence, treating photography as a space of encounter and co-participation. Working in long-term collaboration with people experiencing illness and disability, she creates images that explore vulnerability, connection, and shared experience. Her practice combines documentary sensitivity with conceptual reflection, emphasizing everyday situations, micro-gestures, and the complexity of human relationships.