""On A Flat Wall Nailed By A Stream Of Light" II , Ed. 3/7" Photograph - Limited Edition of 7

I, Angelika Ejtel (alias RapidHeartMovement), am a Polish self-portrait artist currently based in Dallas, TX, U.S.A. I was born and raised in Poland. I graduated in French and Romance Philology; later, I accomplished my Ph.D. studies in linguistics. I worked at the university for four years as an instructor and researcher before I immigrated to the United States in 2014.

I consider my photographic creation as a poetic experience in which I drown and infuse myself and, as a result, it gives me the feeling that I am reborn with each portrait into a new being. Although, all of my photographs are self-portraits, they shouldn’t be necessarily read as self-presentations, rather they should be revealed as the multiplicity of “selves” available to one individual. To put it succinctly, my attitude towards the self is more of an exploratory journey between an awareness of self and an unawareness of some aspects of oneself.

Most of my work is inspired by the poetry of a famous Polish poet-Halina Poswiatowska. As a linguist, I find beauty in its simplicity, metaphorical message, and liberty of interpretation.
I search for the same values while depicting the meaning of her poems in my works. My preferred medium so far has been photography; although, I feel I would love to experiment with others (painting, art/text, collage) in the future.

My images encompass the motifs of love, longing and solitude. Slow, silent and at times painful, these portraits being self-portraits whisper in silence, cry in loneliness or scream in suffering, always between love and death.
My objective to re-examine the eternal question of human existence is the one Poswiatowska probes in her poem:

"can anyone
entangle between love and death
an anecdote about being"