Futures Curator Award: Nothin But a Curtain

Running from Thursday 2nd of February to Saturday 25th March 2023, Rabikowska’s work is a multi-media project that details her 4,552 mile journey through what was once the Eastern Bloc in the summer of 2021, photographing & interviewing over 100 young people living in the shadow of the former Iron Curtain. Specifically, the work documents the experiences of women, non-binary, genderfluid and transgender people, born during the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Curator Vera Hadzhiyska worked with Rabikowska on the development of Nothing But A Curtain, which consists of photographs, moving image, archival images and documents, and installations, and now brings it to Belfast Exposed as part of our Futures Curator programme. Alongside her images, Rabikowska asked each participant to contribute a piece of fabric, which she stitched together whilst travelling. In this way, she created her own metaphorical version of the former political divide, which once separated the so-called “East” from “West.” In addition, the photographic work itself was created using a Soviet-made Kiev 80 camera, produced in a military factory in 1978 in Kiev. The metal shutter of the camera imprints a “curtain” of light within the images, echoing the way Soviet history has shaped gender identity.

This multidisciplinary approach seeks to challenge linear documentary story-telling conventions and to allow for a plurality of voices and experiences to be seen and heard.