RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK

© Martina Lajczak - „A braided river that flowsfrom Poland to Austria I“, 2023. © Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project © Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project View all images ↓
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RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK explores identity, migration, and inherited trauma of Polish migrant women in Austria. Inspired by Julietta Singh’s No Archive Will Restore You, it weaves personal memory into a collective visual and emotional archive.

RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK

Growing up, a phrase frequently repeated by my mother came to define much of my early understanding of the world: “In this country, you either have money or you have education – otherwise, you’re nobody.”
As the daughter of two Polish immigrants, my father from a working-class background, and my mother, an academic who, despite her qualifications, was never able to establish a career in her field in Austria, only the path of education was an option for me, and it would shape my upbringing and socialization in the years to come.

The emphasis on academic achievement intensified dramatically after the death of my father when I was four years old. From the very first day I began my education, my mother would braid my hair into a French plait each morning before school, insisting that my long hair should never distract me from learning. Over time, the braid softened into a simple ponytail, but it wasn’t until I was fifteen that I dared to leave the house with my hair down for the very first time.

Rivers we carry, Mountains we seek delves into the lived experiences of first- and second-generation Polish migrant women in Austria. Rooted in personal memory and shaped by the currents of contemporary social developments, it illuminates questions of identity, migration, integration, discrimination, and the often-silenced traumas that accompany these experiences. Through a multidisciplinary approach, ranging from analog and digital photography, lens-based media and generative algorithms, to sculptural works, the project embraces artistic complexity as a mirror of the layered and often contradictory nature of migrant realities. This interplay of media seeks not only to reflect these intricacies but to transform the personal into the collective, to give form to what is often felt but rarely articulated.

Inspired by Julietta Singh’s No Archive Will Restore You and Antonio Gramsci’s reflections in the Prison Notebooks on the “inventory of traces” and the necessity of knowing oneself as an act of historical awareness, the work examines how memory and embodiment function as counter-archives within the framework of displacement. In revisiting familial gestures and inherited narratives, it constructs an embodied archive that resists erasure and reclaims subjectivity through intimate acts of reconstruction.

In dialogue with Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch, the project also revisits the figure of the single Polish woman, often perceived as non-conforming within capitalist and patriarchal frameworks. Here, gestures of care, healing, and cultivation like gardening, herbal knowledge, and the tending of domestic ecologies, are reimagined as forms of quiet resistance and autonomy, connecting feminist histories of labor, body, and survival.

Through this intersection of feminist theory, autobiography, and material experimentation, Rivers we carry, Mountains we seek weaves an intergenerational narrative of resilience, where the private becomes political, and where the archive of the body becomes both vessel and landscape.

I am deeply grateful that this project, from its very beginning, has benefited from the guidance and mentorship of these remarkable individuals: Elisa Medde, Lucas Foglia & Laura El-Tantawy. Without their insight and feedback, this development would not have been possible. My long-term goal is to turn this body of work into a photobook and to present it as widely as possible in order to foster dialogue and reflection around these themes.

Martina Lajczak is a Vienna-based photographer and visual artist with Polish roots, whose work explores themes of emancipation, identity, migration, labor, and discrimination. Combining analog and digital photography with generative techniques, she crafts abstract, multilayered narratives that have been published and exhibited across Europe, and recently in the US and Canada.

© Martina Lajczak - „A braided river that flowsfrom Poland to Austria I“, 2023.
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„A braided river that flowsfrom Poland to Austria I“, 2023.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Power-up“, 2023.In Polish folklore, the practice of weaving flowers and herbs into braids was deeply symbolic, embodying protection, femininity, and a spiritual connection to nature, often linked to rites of love, fertility, and seasonal transitions. In death rituals, unmarried women were adorned with floral crowns or braided flowers, signifying purity and lost potential.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Oranges I“, 2023.During communism in Poland, oranges were a rare luxury, symbolizing festivity, childhood joy, and a glimpse of the outside world beyond the constraints of the socialist economy. To this day, my mother tells me the story that when she was a child there was only one orange a year, at Christmas.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Fortune-telling“, 2023.On Andrzejki (St. Andrew’s Eve), a traditional divination ritual involves peeling an apple in one continuous strip and tossing the peel over the shoulder. The shape it formes is believed to resemble the initial of the future spouse’s name, making it a popular fortune-telling custom. The importance of the husband is repeated in all corners of Polish culture.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Mother & Daughter II“, 2023.The braid as a visual metaphor for the close bond between mother and daughter, sometimes by choice and sometimes not.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Malva, braided“, 2023. Gardening was always an important part of my family‘s life in Poland, especially during the communist era when food was a rare commodity, and the knowledge was passed down from generation to generation. My mother still teaches me how best to look after plants, and planted flowers and vegetables with me that she already had in the garden of her parents‘ house in Poland.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Sunflowers, braided“, 2023. Gardening was always an important part of my family‘s life in Poland, especially during the communist era when food was a rare commodity, and the knowledge was passed down from generation to generation. My mother still teaches me how best to look after plants, and planted flowers and vegetables with me that she already had in the garden of her parents‘ house in Poland.

© Martina Lajczak - „A braided river that flowsfrom Poland to Austria IV“, 2023.
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„A braided river that flowsfrom Poland to Austria IV“, 2023.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Cheap twin“, 2023.A Herkimer diamond is a quartz crystal that resembles a real diamond, clear and radiant at first glance, yet not recognized as a „real“ diamond. One feeling I grew up with was my mother‘s constant fear of being perceived as a less “valuable” member of society as a migrant in this country. Juxtaposed with a photo of my mother at her first communion in late 1960s Poland.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Faworki“, 2024.A plate of faworki, also known as angel wings or chrust, prepared by my mother. In Poland they are usually made during Carnival and eaten on Fat Thursday, the day before Lent. Food holds a very special significance in Polish culture and family structures, and these faworki, having the nickname „angel wings“, often evoke a sense of nostalgia and celebration.

© Martina Lajczak - „Dough“, 2024.My Mother preparing the dough for pierogi, one of the most traditional Polish dishes.
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„Dough“, 2024.My Mother preparing the dough for pierogi, one of the most traditional Polish dishes.

© Martina Lajczak - „Skin breaks when the heart gets fuller“, 2024.
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„Skin breaks when the heart gets fuller“, 2024.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Workhorse“, 2023.The Fiaker horses in Vienna are a historical symbol of the city, particularly popular with wealthy tourists, but their working conditions have always been criticized because of the unnatural conditions in which the animals have to remain. For me they embody the hidden, often overlooked labor and exploitation that supports the romanticized image of the city.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Girl at fair, out of focus I-IV“, 2023.Girls in typical traditional costumes at a street fair in Vienna in late summer, especially popular among the more affluent parts of society. The photos were taken with a broken lens in an attempt to convey the impossibility of achieving a degree of assimilation that would give one the feeling of equality with non-migrants.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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„Palms“, 2024.A Polish tradition that my mother has carried on here: colorful Easter palm weavings. While Easter is also decorated with palm catkins in Austria (one of the many similarities of sharing the same dominant religion), the Polish tend to go a little bit extra in this regard, and you can even buy colourful rabbit and chicken shaped weavings in Polish supermarkets here in Vienna.

© Martina Lajczak - Untitled, 2024.
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Untitled, 2024.

© Martina Lajczak - Unititled, 2025.
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Unititled, 2025.

© Martina Lajczak - Image from the RIVERS WE CARRY, MOUNTAINS WE SEEK photography project
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Typical Polish Malvae, a half-eaten sunflower head on the train to Warsaw, and an archival photograph ofmy mother eating sunflower seeds in the garden of her parents‘ house in Radom, Poland. Probably at some point in the 1970s.

© Martina Lajczak - „Cross“, 2024.Remembering childhood and youth in a family that was strongly influenced by Catholicism.
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„Cross“, 2024.Remembering childhood and youth in a family that was strongly influenced by Catholicism.

© Martina Lajczak - „Mother & Daughter I“, 2023.
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„Mother & Daughter I“, 2023.