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The drawings were subjected to psychological analysis by Dr. Hab. Przemysław Piotrowski, head of the Forensic Psychology and Criminology Unit at the Institute of Applied Psychology of the Jagiellonian University. His expert opinion is ruthlessly clear: “In traumatic situations, when one experiences things that previously seemed unimaginable, words fail. The multitude of dramatic events that cannot be compared to anything else makes it very difficult to verbalise one’s observations, feelings and thoughts. This difficulty involves more than just the concentration of intense emotions: people who experience events such as natural disasters, brutal crimes or wartime activities find that trying to describe it in words, especially to people who never found themselves in similar situations, is futile in terms of communication, as it fails to convey the dramatic nature of events and what they had to endure. Some sensitive individuals attempt other means of expression, such as music, writing or drawing.”

Drawing is a means of projection; in other words, according to psychodynamic psychologists and psychiatrists, it is an unconscious manifestation of our traits. Farouk began to draw in a critical, extreme moment, to protect his sense of self. The story of Farouk and his Polish-Iraqi family will serve as a pretext for deliberations on the geopolitical and economic mechanisms that influence human fate and their effect on further generations. Farouk appears as an everyman whose story resonates with the combined experience of Kurds and Arabs who visited Poland in the 1970s. It is worth noting that Poland cultivated close ties with the Middle East up until the 1990s: many Poles left for Iraq and found employment in the construction of roads, bridges, power stations, residential and administrative buildings.

These good relations were interrupted by wars. The experience of long-standing armed conflict, permanent danger, no prospects for a change of fate and harassment on the basis of nationality places Farouk among other victims of wartime oppression. It is interesting to see how he tries to transform war trauma through drawings and poetry, which show clear references to ancient Persian, Kurdish and Arabic culture.

At the exhibition Anna Witkowska modifies original drawings, poems and letters of her father-in-law, adding the perspective of European culture and our way of thinking about the Middle East. Using objects, video, large-format prints, a black-and-white carpet and a wall painting titled All of Farouk’s Wars she brings us closer to Farouk the everyman: a war survivor who has loved and who wants to love again, reminding us that “We have one heart”. Consequently, the exhibition will attempt to face the experience of nomadism, of forming relationships between people of different nationalities as well as the consequences of war and its impact on the human mind, also in the philosophical dimension.

Anna Witkowska is a visual artist, graphic designer and occasionally a curator. She has been associated with Gdańsk ever since her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. Anna and Adam Witkowski form a husband-and-wife art duo. Anna’s individual projects often have a synthetic, graphic character, with text playing a vital role. Witkowska explores the poetics of advertising with an existential dimension (pictograms, murals, lightboxes, video). She employs video, photography, installation and objects.

She is the holder of two scholarships awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. In 2011, together with Adam Witkowski, she was nominated for the prestigious Deutsche Bank “Views” award for Young Artists at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art. In 2013 and 2017 she won the scholarship of the Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. In 2014, together with Adam Witkowski, she curated the Narrations Festival The Sage and the Ghost, for which she won the Splendor Gedanensis award. Recent years saw her revive a former student collective Friends from the Seaside, to which she invited further Friends. Witkowska also co-authored Friends from the Seaside, an extensive account of the cooperation between Tricity artists in 2002–16, which was published in 2017.

The exhibition We Have One Heart is associated with the artist’s doctoral degree.