Vicky Polak: I Dreamt The Streets Were Made of Water (Until August 29, 2026)

10 & Zero Uno

2 July - 29 August 2026

Curated by Julia Terzano

Essay "The Feminine Breathes Earth" by Chiara Celoria

Vicky Polak’s photographic practice is approached here not as a compendium of static series, but as an open-ended, migratory research. The works in this exhibition carry a continuous state of transit, moving through thresholds where human presence, geography, and inherited histories intersect. Here, the body operates as an active, somatic archive, a site of encounter and a vessel where temporal layers and territorial currents converge. Through her analogue double-exposures, the boundary between skin and terrain dissolves. Movement merges with the austerity of stone and the volatility of light, shifting the photographic act from documentation to a visceral, durational rite.

At its core, the exhibition traces a material displacement, marking a transition from the dense, volcanic weight of earth to the fluid rhythms of Venice. Where her earlier gestures dwelled in seismic landscape and mineral gravity, her recent impulses embrace water as a space of active listening and ritual regeneration. This shift does not imply a conceptual rupture; rather, it represents a migration of the research itself. As the matter transforms from solid to liquid, the foundational inquiries remain: How does memory settle within the limits of the corporeal? How does ancestral wisdom endure across geographic dislocations?

In her most recent series, Offerings to Crystalline Waters, these questions take an intimate form. Over the past four years, during repeated visits to Venice, Polak casts a coin into the lagoon, asking the sea goddess to bring her back soon: a ritual that binds her personal longing to familial memory and Italian roots. The Adriatic becomes more than a setting; it acts as a fluid archive that gathers stories, absences, and the constant exchanges between body and water. Through this minimal gesture, the sea sustains what the flesh and the land already hold.

By presenting these interconnected stages of work as a single, circulating process, where her previous series - Seismic Gestures, Dark Waters, and Offerings to Crystalline Waters - converge, I DREAMT THE STREETS WERE MADE OF WATER offers a space where territory and lineage are understood as cyclical currents. The images on these walls serve as a visual sediment, showing that these shared histories do not end, but continue to circulate, taking new shape.

Artist Biography:

Vicky Polak is an interdisciplinary artist working across film, photography, and visual anthropology. Her practice explores themes of memory, identity, and cultural narratives through documentary and experimental storytelling. With a background in anthropology and cinema, she blends research-driven processes with intuitive, poetic visual language. Her work was exhibited at Photo London International Art Fair with The Light Gallery in 2026. She has been recognised with the Eaton Fund Grant (2025, London), the FIFV International Photography Awards (2013 and 2021, Chile), and the Proyecto Imaginario Scholarship (2016–17, Argentina), and featured in international portfolio reviews including Format Festival (2026, UK), Paris Photo (2025), and Photo Days (2025). Recent exhibitions include Topology of Ritual (2025, Ambassador’s Residence, UK), Seismic Gestures (2025, London & LA Design Week), and Brigadas (2021, FIFV, Chile).