The exhibition Katarzyna Swiniarska, a graduate of the Faculty of Painting and Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, is modest. The canvases (several small portraits and two larger paintings) get lost in the space of the Długa Gallery at BOK-MCC. Nevertheless, the exhibition is worth seeing.
The portraits of women in the “We Are Horrible” series refer to two artistic events. The first is Anna Janczyszyn-Jaros’s 1999 art billboard with the same title; the second is Lars von Trier’s film “Antichrist”.
The artist noticed the aforementioned billboard and interpreted it as a summary of the position of women in Polish, Catholic society: always set in opposition to the figure of the Virgin Mary. Compared with Her, women are defiled, dirty and guilty. In Trier’s film, the artist was intrigued by the change that takes place in the main character—the transformation from victim into aggressor.
This “ideological foundation” underlies the simple portraits, executed with bold brushstrokes. In the paintings, the models are shown without adornment, in simple, unrefined clothing or naked. Their faces show a grimace, pride, perhaps disgust or dissatisfaction. They certainly do not smile obligingly and artificially as they do in advertisements.
Swiniarska’s women seem to be themselves—people who need do nothing. They are barefoot, without high heels or tight pumps, and without trousers—an attribute of men’s clothing. In tank tops and underwear, nothing pinches them under the arms or at the waist. Their poses are careless, relaxed and loose. They look out from the paintings, uninterested in the viewer, as though the viewer did not exist. Both the viewer and their judgment are completely irrelevant to them.
The exhibition can be viewed until 6 May, preferably before the film screenings. Please do not be discouraged by the impression of an empty gallery. Let this particular ugliness of free women have its own space, too.
(information: Grażyna Hanaf)