Ordinary Distances | The Korean Community in Wrocław – a photography exhibition

Ordinary Distances is a story about encounters, everyday life and the experience of living between places. It explores how distance can be both physical and emotional, and how a place left behind can still be present in everyday life.

In 2025, Italian photographer Marina Pietrocola and Georgian photographer Mariam Giunashvili undertook artistic residencies in Wrocław, during which they conducted their own research into the Korean community in Wrocław and Bielany Wrocławskie. Rather than creating a representative portrait of the community, the artists focused on encounters with specific individuals, their stories, gestures and glimpses of everyday life.

Although they worked independently, their perspectives complement one another. One draws attention to the landscape, architecture and personal stories, whilst the other focuses on gestures, relationships and the atmosphere of their encounters. Together, they create a narrative about building trust, listening attentively and learning about the experiences of people living between different places.

None of the photographs were taken in Korea, and yet Korea is present in almost every frame — through memories, objects, daily rituals, work and relationships. The exhibition is therefore not about overcoming distance, but about experiencing it on a daily basis and how a place can remain close despite physical separation.

The photographs are accompanied by personal objects loaned or donated by members of the Korean community. These do not merely serve an illustrative function — they become independent elements of the exhibition, traces of specific stories and experiences. Their presence also shifts the question of authorship: the community is not merely what has been photographed, but becomes part of the exhibition itself.

Ordinary Distances is an invitation to look at what lies between places — and to find, within other people’s stories, one’s own experiences of closeness, distance, memory and everyday life.

The exhibition is the result of artist residencies organised by the Wrocław Institute of Culture as part of the international Magic Carpets platform, in collaboration with the GUA Collective. The exhibition was curated by Sangmin Cha and Paulina Brelińska-Garsztka. The residencies were accompanied by photographer Wojciech Chrubasik, who documented the artists’ joint walks and field visits and supported the process of creating the exhibition.