PENUMBRA Members Gallery | JUDyta Grudzien
“We Love You” is an experimental photo-based project about domestic work done by housekeepers, colloquially known as “cleaning ladies”.
I am one of those housekeepers who organizes and beautifies the living spaces of other people. This work constantly exposes me to toxic cleaning supplies, making me feel as if I am slowly erasing my health and my body.
While working I’m wearing rubber gloves and attached to them are color film negatives of spaces I’m in. During this performative act, the fragile surface of the film becomes degraded and alternated permanently by poisonous household chemicals as the human body also is.
My hands are my daily tools: indispensable but very vulnerable. By using a chemigram process, I place my bare hands immersed in domestic cleaning chemistry onto light-sensitive photographic paper creating direct “hand prints”. They are both, a testimony to my slow deterioration and an homage to the first human cave paintings.
By using my voice as an Artist to tell my story as a Cleaning Lady, I want to stand up for myself, justify my existence as a human and initiate the long-overdue uncomfortable conversation on a social class system where the imbalance of power between employer and employee treats the latter one like “disposable gloves”.
Judyta Grudzien is a New York City artist who was born and raised in Poland. Initially, her interest was in Polish literature, but she discovered a more universal language of photography.
Judyta’s photographic practice consists mainly of using 35mm and 4x5 film; for her analog photography is an experience that is more hands-on and authentic. Currently, she is exploring alternative photographic processes like cyanotypes, chemigrams, image transfers, mordançage, and other printing techniques.
Judyta has shown her work in New York, Arizona, Philadelphia, Berlin and Barcelona. She received an Honorable Mention in 2018 Contemporary Photography Competition from Philadelphia Photo Art Center and another two from the 12th Julia Margret Cameron Award Non-Professional Section in Cityscape and Alternative Processes categories.
In 2020 she was granted two weeks darkroom residency founded by Back To The Lab and AlterWork Studios. Subsequently, in April of 2021, she had her first two-person show in AlterWork Studios.
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