Irena Kalicka – Goosebumps

Irena Kalicka’s new photographic series is a collection of images showing white geese next to white-clad figures that bring to mind wedding photos where young brides pose in ceremonial white dresses. But Kalicka’s brides are usually not maidens at all but rather bizarre figures with beards sticking out from under breezy veils, with faces hidden under thick layers of make-up or frozen in mask-like grimaces. Bearded, muscular, tattooed or dollyish in their ceremonial dresses and fin-de-siècle laces and tulles, the brides trigger off a chain of associations, a mix of diverse cultural codes, from romantic elations to perverse excitations. Part of this queer masquerade-in-white are the strolling geese. Their group portraits defuse the tension of the sentimental-demonic mise-en-scènes that could otherwise give us goosebumps if they gave vent to repressed fantasies.