Agnieszka Polska (b. 1985, Lublin) works with moving images, creating animated videos based on individual photographs, and also creates sound works and short films. Polska’s interest focuses on archival material, simple images hitherto ignored, moments that went unnoticed by history or art history, unfinished beginnings and abortive projects. Polska has created a body of works with this approach, including How the Work is Done (2011), her film about a 1956 student strike at the Kraków Art Academy, Sensitization to Colour (2010), which uses photographs to restage a 1968 exhibition of performances by the artist and activist Włodzimierz Borowski, and Garden (2010), a film about a fictional visit to the garden of the Polish artist Pawel Freisler, who has disappeared from public life. In addition, Polska has created poetic reflections on a number of dead or forgotten artists, who she depicts as living on in an afterlife (Future Days, 2013), as well as dreamlike animated sequences that harken back to surrealist animation from the early decades of the twentieth century Fire Cupping belongs to the latter group. The film begins as a straightforward depiction of a series of cupping glasses being put in place, but then takes an unexpected turn: a series of sounds emerge from the cupping glasses, followed by flames. Using found images and simple, moderately paced animation, Polska manages to create an atmosphere that is both poetic and disconcerting, punctuated by surprises.