„Gdy stawała się kobietą, ja również odzyskałam swoją kobiecość”. O kobiecości i tranzycji w cyklu <malavida: moRgan & veriKami> Barbary Konopki
When she was becoming a woman I also got back my femininity”. On Femininity and Transition in Barbara Konopka’s Series ‘<malavida: moRgan & veriKami>’

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the series of photographs <malavida: moRgan & veriKami> taken by the artist Barbara Konopka between 2005 and 2007 together with her friend Weronika Kami (Amelia), who was the model in the series. Analyzing parts of the series along with curatorial and critical texts from 2007 and an interview with Konopka conducted in 2022, the author asks the following question about the series. Why are visualized doses of hormones, brain scans, scaled-up chromosomes and reproductive organs incorporated into scenes from everyday life so important in <malavida>? What is the purpose of this juxtaposition? Why is Konopka focused on these various substances and body parts, which have historically been treated in various configurations as the ultimate determinants of gender? In answering these questions, the author argues that Konopka’s work focuses on transition in a way that seemingly replicates sexological efforts aimed at unambiguously stabilizing gender. However, in the artists’ work, these are creatively transformed, redirecting the power of biology understood as a stabilizing force and naturalizing the heterosexual and cis order, toward relationality and the production of gender through social and very bodily practices in which biology is understood outside of cis logic. Referring to feminist researchers associated with trans and queer studies, the authors points to how the series records the work and efforts involved in gender labor, reproduction that allows for transition, and the desired experience of gender.

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