Filmoteka Muzeum

When the Other Becomes One's Own is yet another piece by Alicja Żebrowska from the cycle under the same title. It concerns a real person who, despite biological determinism, took the risk of a radical decision concerning identity and underwent a gender-affirming surgery. She now feels completely a woman???, uses a female name, which she does not disclose in the art project; let us call her Ewa. Żebrowska’s project comprised two very different parts. [...]

It is a black and white, exceptionally creative video by Alicja Żebrowska, which delivers a hefty dose of documentary footage relevant to the topic. The overlapping photographs, fragments of films and Ewa’s statements portray and seem to dissect various deposits of her emotions, impressions, beliefs. During something of a liberation session, the protagonist reveals ever more different segments of her personality. We learn about her past traumas, her current professional activity in the organisation of fashion shows, her relations with her professional environment, the silent distance of random observers, but above all her search for a stance to adopt towards herself.

Frequent combinations of two mirror-image versions of a single film sequence within one frame suggest the portrayal of two sides of Ewa’s personality that seek to come into full contact with one another. The structure of the changing frames demonstrates in a captivating way the possibilities of visual language based on ordinary photographs and simple but surprising solutions. The film is as fascinating as Ewa’s personality. Keeping in mind all along the profound change she had undergone, we inevitably trace details that reveal her manly or womanly gestures, movements of the hands, ways of looking, facial expressions. However, what results is the awareness that regardless of the proportions between the male and the female code of behaviour that she reveals, the most important thing is the inner sense of identity of the portrayed person, which comes at the cost of physical and emotional pain.

(quoted from: Grzegorz Borkowski, “Między wizerunkiem a tożsamością,” Fototapeta, no. 1 / 2002)