My Life and Art: In My Own Words
By Joanna Ciechanowska
Growing up in Poland with a complex history as the daughter of a resistance fighter, who never surrendered to the communist rule, was a challenge in itself. My father was a member of Battalion Parasol of the Home Army (AK Parasol) and fought in the Warsaw Uprising during the Second World War. My grandmother’s brother died at Dachau concentration camp. My aunt’s husband survived Auschwitz. My childhood tendency to ask honest questions did not go well either. There was a period of struggle to convince my father to let me study art rather than architecture, the latter being his preference.
1970 – 1972 I began studying architecture at the Gdańsk Art College. I was living with my parental grandmother in Sopot. During this time, the Tricity (Trójmiasto) became cut off from the rest of Poland for two weeks. There were tanks in the streets and the communist police shot protestors dead. Residing in the Tricity I was able to witness the beginnings of the revolution spearheaded in the Gdańsk Shipyard by what was to become Solidarity.
1976 I graduated from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (ASP) with an MA in Graphic Design and Painting.
1976 – 1977 I came to London at the invitation of my ‘przyszywana ciocia’ (step-auntie) whose husband was a pilot in the Polish Air Force divisions during the Second World War. I travelled through Europe, en route selling a few prints and oil paintings to an art gallery in Essen, Germany, with my friend’s help. But I was too shy to present myself to the gallery owner, when he asked: ‘So, where is the man who produced these?’
1977 I was studying English at City of Westminster Collage when I met my future English civil engineer husband whom I would accompany to many international postings. We departed to Iran in 1977.
1977 – 1979 During our posting to Iran we were living in Tehran, where I was working for an advertising agency. I used my husband as the model for the male figure in my Iran Air advertising campaign. I travelled through the country – exploring Shiraz, Isfahan and Persepolis, seeing wild camels running through the deserts near Yazd, encountering the ancient culture of Persia and its ancient religion Zoroastrianism. I remember the colourful dresses and long, plaited hair of the nomadic Qashqai tribe, reminiscent of Polish Romany dress. I insisted on living closer to the city centre rather than in the posh outskirts inhabited by expats because I wanted to be closer to the local life, the bazaar, whatever I wanted to see. It was in Iran that I learnt to cook – from our landlady – mainly Persian food, lamb and chicken dishes. It was my first encounter with Islam – with an entirely new culture, another religion, a foreign language other than English, old history as well as history in the making. My husband and I had some contact with the British expat community in Tehran. We were not connected to any Polish people there, other than occasional visits from the Polish Embassy. At school I was not taught about the Anders Army route, so I was shocked to discover the graves of Polish people including children at the local cemetery, caused by an outbreak of German Measles. Isfahan had a Polish school as legacy of the Anders Army. Iran was quite a peaceful and liberal country at the time, but my friends – students from the Tehran University – were revolting for democracy.
1979 The Iranian Revolution, which started with riots on the streets, had the opposite effect. The police visited our home trying to arrest me. At the time I still only had my Polish passport. I was given a British passport, issued by the British Consulate in Tehran, within a couple of hours. We were evacuated to Britain on the last plane leaving Tehran. I remember the cheers of joy on that plane, when the pilot announced: ‘We are leaving Iranian airspace.’ Shortly after we had arrived safely back in London, in a state of shock and having abandoned all of our possessions there, Khomeini arrived from Paris to take over power, turning Iran into the Islamic Republic. Back in Britain we felt lost house-hunting. Through a friend we learnt of a Victorian cottage on the Isle of Dogs, originally housing for the Great Eastern ship builders. This was to become a renovation project and our long-term home until 1987. We lived amongst our friends including many creatives. Margaret Thatcher can be credited for the regeneration of the Isle of Dogs.
1980 – 1981 After a brief period of rest in Britain, we departed for Southern Africa. Living in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, I was wandering on my own through the dirt roads, burnt grasses and red earth in this mountainous kingdom. Living in the traditional Basotho hut because it was cooler than modern accommodation, at night we would listen to the relentless concerts of crickets. We were there during Apartheid. I travelled extensively across Southern Africa, to the borders of Mozambique, saw the Zambezi River, and explored Johannesburg, including Soweto. I started to discover what the word ‘horizon’ really means. I remember gazing across to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. Encountering wilderness and wildlife, going on a Kruger National Park safari looking for the Big Five – those experiences gave me ideas for later illustration commissions.
1982 Another brief posting abroad to Cairo, Egypt. I could not resist spending every free day following the footsteps of the archaeologist Kazimierz Michałowski, reading the hieroglyphs on the desert tombs, traipsing through the sands and the Karnak Temple complex at Luxor, looking in wonder at the Mummy of King Amenhotep propped up against the wall at the Cairo Museum, and seeing the Gold Mask of Tutankhamun for the first time.
1982 – 1990 My career as an illustrator and graphic designer properly started when I came back to London. I enrolled on courses at Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art, simply in order to have access to a studio, but I was replying to adverts for a designer and/or illustrator. Once I started to get commissions, the work was flowing in. I collaborated with several publishers, media outlets as well as design studios such as David Davies Ltd and Lock/Pettersen Ltd. The latter had a design studio in the heart of Soho. The long corporate hours and tight deadlines meant that I regularly worked beyond 6 pm and frequently until the early hours of the morning, observing Soho life out of the office window, and relying on taxis to get back home to the Isle of Dogs. I was represented by the Association of Illustrators. Throughout this time I also continued developing the fine art aspect of my creative practice. It is not easy for an artist to keep producing commercial works, which always involve some compromise whilst at the same time keeping up the fine art work, but it paid off. I secured important design commissions (e.g. IBM, CBS Records, London Transport Advertising, British Telecom), as well as getting selected for fine art exhibitions in London, namely ‘Mecanorma Silver Maker Awards’ at the Mall Galleries (1983), ‘Time: B&H Gold Awards’ at Hamiltons Gallery (1984), ‘European Illustration Design & Art Direction Awards’, 1984–1985 and 1986–1987 with touring exhibitions at Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, Paris, Amsterdam and Helsinki, and ‘Whitechapel Open’ at Whitechapel Gallery (1987),amongst others.
1990 – 1996 Little did I know that the longest adventure – a posting to Hong Kong – was yet to come. It was initially supposed to be just for two years, but it stretched to six. Hong Kong was British at the time, and it was fast changing. In my art I became an ethnographer of disappearing Hong Kong such as the Kowloon Walled City, a haven and a hell for excluded groups and refugees, which was subsequently demolished. At this time, I also designed charity Christmas and greeting cards sold in aid of the Matilda Child Development Centre at the Matilda International Hospital. Living on the other side of the globe for a while had a certain advantage, namely being able to travel to countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Australia and, of course, mainland China, stopping in India on the way back for holidays back at home in England. This posting inspired large pastels of Asia, featuring dragons and the colour red. We socialised with the British expat community. At the time, there were traumatic events in my life too, reflected in the artwork Broken Toys: Small Life Gone (1993).
1996 – 1999 Posting to Poland, for one of the first European Union-funded research projects about environmental pollution in the southern mining region of Silesia. We spent two years in Katowice followed by a year in Warsaw. Being able to reconnect with what now became a free/post-communist Poland – after such a long time – was a different experience. It felt as if I was seeing Poland for the first time like a foreigner from the outside looking in, whilst at the same time my deep roots were sprouting new shoots again. I had my first solo exhibition in Poland, ‘Masks and Memories’, at the Test Gallery (Galeria Test) in Warsaw in 1999. I rejoiced in seeing my son Christopher speaking in two languages at once and reading Polish books. Born colour-blind, since early childhood Christopher had a gift for music, and went on to become a musician.
1999 – 2024 Since 1999 I have been back to London, with trips to Poland and Scandinavia. Having settled down in Britain, I have been working more on my own art. This resulted in being selected for the Royal Academy of Art’s Summer Exhibition 2012 – my limited-edition original print E-Migration. Will I MakeIt? (edition of 50 copies) sold out within two days and is now in the collections of Robert Hiscox and Tim Spector, as well as other prominent collectors around the world. Exhibitions followed – including VI International Biennale of Painting and Textiles ‘Colours and Textures’ in Gdynia, Poland (2011), where my painting series Svalbard: Climate Change (2011) won an Honorary Prize of the Jury; ‘Quality of Everyday Life’ at Summerhall, Edinburgh (2013) and the ‘National Open Arts Competition’ touring show at Somerset House, London (2014) and Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2014–2015).
To summarize – I did not plan to emigrate, it just happened. In hindsight, my travels around the world – and especially living amongst the local population of our international destinations, some with complex history – gave me a different perspective on the world. Perhaps more tolerance, perhaps more understanding of human nature and of how people are formed by the surroundings they have to live in. There is no such thing as universal émigré experience; it is always closely connected to an individual, but at the same time we inevitably form social groups based on the shared experience of ‘where we originally come from’. I have learnt not to look back.
About twenty years ago I joined the Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain (APA) as well as the POSK community, helping Janina Baranowska – the first Director of the POSK Gallery – organise shows and manage the gallery space. It was a great friendship. Originally from Grodno, Baranowska was one the Polish émigrés who came to Britain with the Anders Army after having been sent to Kazakhstan during the Second World War. I took over the running of the POSK Gallery from Janina in a voluntary, unpaid capacity and I have continued to showcase Polish as well as international artists from around the world. Artists connect with the viewers through their own language of art.
As an artist, I am an observer. That is my inspiration in art. As well as telling a story.
Joanna Ciechanowska