Aleksandra Vajd is experimenting with the constituent elements of photographic language, its laws and structural variations. She raises the question how far it is possible to persist in a medium that was for so long connected with mimetic illusion and the semantic construction arising from it, which slowly became exhausted and increasingly strayed into the mannered stringing together of images that in a saturated iconosphere rarely have anything new or really meaningful to say. For this reason her explorations are directed towards borderline, interdisciplinary forms of visual expression, where photography connects with related practices and is no longer reliant on a two-dimensional surface. Among other things, she is particularly interested in placing the photographic product in space – a product which is no longer dependent on a pre-selected image from the mass of iconographic possibilities, but arises in line with the photographer’s original ideas from material produced with photographic resources and procedures. Thus Vajd confronts the viewer with a spatial structure whose constituent elements are photographic in origin, but visually and in terms of effect are sculptural, combined in accordance with the principles of interactive installations.
From 2002 to 2015, she predominantly worked in collaboration with the Czech photographer Hynek Alt. Their work process was based on the collection of visual elements in the everyday environment, their escape from the original context and the search for new connections, analogies and shifts. In the permanent dialogue they investigated the issues of authorship, uniqueness, subjectivity, simulacrum, stereotype, social and sexual identity, appropriation and simulation.
Aleksandra currently investigates ideas, attempts and ways how the medium of photography redefines itself through materiality and new ways of installation/presentation in the gallery/space. In her latest work minimalist groups are formed by combining two or more exposed photograms, creating an almost embossed impression on the wall, platforms, pedestals and allowing us to think about the object-hood of the supposedly immaterial medium. The photography like this obtains oftentimes qualities based on its presence, physicality, materiality, temporality and experience.