Virginia Woolf once wrote that the artist shouldn’t be on any one side of the gender divide: to create one should be either female-male or male-female, rather than focusing on your own sex. While those words once seemed to me prophetic, nowadays looking with some perspective, they are no longer. I know I am a woman, a weak woman; I know I am a painter, which has always seemed to me shameful and like a bad omen (a painter = a freak). I am glad about at the very thought of realizing it, as this makes me strong. If only I wanted I could carry mountains.
Project consists of 3 parts:
Part 1
Szapocznikow and Kozyra suffered from cancer, Felix Gonzalez – Torres AIDS, Wyspianski, Stryjenska, Lenin, Boudelaire were syphilitics; Van Gogh was schizophrenic. I suffer from Tetania. I choise 49 important people who have suffered from some illness.
The happy medium is to give a little bit of divinity to align myself with the greats. Then one needn’t use words, because if I place myself in suitable context it automaticaly makes me a member of this world.
Stryjenska inspired me, saying that when found out she was ill with syphilis - that since Wyspianski had suffered from it, and other Greats, that she came to a conclusion that she is a great also.
Part 2
pictures – the portraits of peacocks
you can interpret it in various/ different ways
my idea is a modest humble animal, who when they unfold their wings have no equal as a royal animal. Artists used to be perceived on the one hand as people behind society, and on the other hand always close to those of importance at court.
People of culture, creators, regardless of their descent, are treated equal to aristocracy and authority. You can interpret that a peacock is an animal proud by nature because it knows its worth. The peacock is alike to an artist, a creator, a man who looks at life in an unusual way.
A perfect animal.
At the same time, when I am painting peacocks I can focus on colors, I feel like a flower painter more than Georgia O’Keefe, more decorative than Natalia Gonczarova.
Part 3
I drew my inspiration from a title of Ryszard Grzyb’s exhibition: " Dying because I do not die" and also the explanation of his project. Thoughts of death make me terrified: nevertheless I know that artists are immortal, because there is always something left behind them. So in the third part I am giving them life and I am taking their death away. A cycle of pictures "Go Michael Go" whose leading subject is a plane held by heroes of pictures which were painted by Michael Majerus, who tragically died in an air crash.
„An artist is perceived as a shaman in social optics, a demiurge, a colorful bird, a freak, someone who is permanently ill, is ruined by the temperature of an irremovable trouble. This is, of course, socially made a fantasy. And this widespread fantasy protects the society against a real meeting with the art. But
At the same time it protects the artist against the real responsibility for their own works“. A. Zmijewski – Trembling bodies.
My work is a polemic with Zmijewski’s words. I expose a painting phenomenon. I show in my work proceses which are taking part inside my head, quick decisions and a divine power which there is in a mind. How with the magic pencil I change the course of events. A will to be someone special – creating something memorable - displaces a rational thinking. I am giving myself to this illusion in my works.
Galeria Wizytujaca, 20.03 - 11.04 Warszawa
