Soon_

Dowry is a poetic yet critical reflection on inheritance—both material and emotional. At its core lies the story of a family whose entire life revolved around two hectares of tobacco: a crop meant to secure livelihood and social advancement, yet one that became a source of an invisible yoke. The installation, realised as part of the SOON_81 project, creates a melancholic image in which a dowry is not always a gift—it can also be a burden that holds one at the threshold of adulthood.

 

The work transforms the space into an in-between realm woven from memory, tobacco dust, and shrouds made of keepsakes, where cigarette smoke hovers over everything like a ghost, reminding us of the end. It is a dream of prosperity that begins to come true. It is reaching for a cigarette and lighting it from the filter. It is putting on a beautiful polyester dress that looks good only in photographs. It is a rite of passage that, in fact, never truly took place.

 

Dominika Głowala (born 1996 in Zamość) is a graduate of the Academy of Art in Szczecin. She is a recipient of the Best MA Diplomas 2022 award at the Great Armoury in Gdańsk and a scholarship holder of the Marshal of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship. She combines artistic practice with curatorial work. In her projects, she analyses the notion of domesticity and explores the meanings of memory. By manipulating photographic images, she creates filtered scenographies of constructed or found places. Her works are dreams of prosperity—fantasies of the past that, beneath a hazy surface, reveal various social structures.