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Przepotwarzanie
Please note!
Some of the exhibition contents are deemed appropriate only for visitors over the age of 15. Younger persons may visit the exhibition only by written permission from parents or guardians.
We advise parents and guardians to become acquainted with the contents of the exhibition in advance, since some of them may be viewed as inappropriate for children.

#IseeIfeelIdraw

30 April – 21 August 2022

about the exhibition – Kinga Dunin

#iSeeIFeelDraw

is an exhibition made up of bits and pieces of women’s everyday life, funny and surprising at times, painful and difficult at others. It is a product of day-to-day observations of intimate and private, medial, public, and political reality. The artists use humour as a tool for taming the world around, at the same time frequently questioning the rules that govern this world.

Ten different artists present ten views of the same reality. It is a world of women who do not stay indifferent to what happens around them, but also a world determined by norms and circumstances, which particularly affect women.

The digital media are the natural environment of their art; it is in those media that they have found a wide audience. We meet these artists on the internet, which has its own habits of use – click, like it, and scroll on. How will they function in physical exhibition space? How will this modify their message? This is what visitors to our exhibitions will be able to find out.

The boundary between literature and plastic arts is fluid and conventional, with comics situated somewhere in between, along with cartoons, graphic mini-feuilletons, metaphorical drawings… and, naturally, also memes. Even text itself can carry additional emotions and meanings when arranged graphically. Sometimes one line can tell us more than a hundred words.

contributors

curator: Kinga Dunin
curator representing the Museum of Caricature: Michał Rzecznik
exhibition concept, project and graphic design: elipsy.eu – Kamila Schinwelska, Michał Gwiazdowski
introductory text: Olga Wróbel
English translations: Tomasz Zymer
Ukrainian translations: Julia Bystrytska
technical support service: Leszek Mozolewski
administration: Monika Portka
education and outreach: Iga Skolimowska
promotion: Katarzyna Miękus
media patrons: „Wysokie obcasy”, „Zwykłe życie

The Artists

Maria Apoleika – Psie sucharki (Dog Biscuits)

She studied for 5 years at film school, eventually and definitely to focus on fixed images in the last year of studies. She creates book and press illustrations as well as original cycles. Author of Dog Biscuits, mini-comics about dogs and their human carers published in book and calendar form. Herself she takes care of a large poodle and together they traverse the no man’s land near Łódź (or someone’s land, it depends where they go). Her interests include palaeontology, botany, the internet, and politics.

Matylda Damięcka – The Girl Who Fell on Earth

An actress, vocalist, visual director, and graphic artist. She made her debut under Adam Hanuszkiewicz at Warsaw’s Nowy Theatre. She regularly collaborates with Comedy Club, Och-Theatre, the Polonia Theatre, and Lublin’s InVitro Stage. She produced and provided her vocals for the concert Bowie First Step under the musical direction of Wojciech Waglewski, featuring VooVoo band. Her music collaborators include Wojtek Mazolewski Quintet, Radek Łukasiewicz, and Leszek Biolik. With the latter co-created (as visual director) the concert Cohen and Women and the project Vanishing Cities. Her drawings have been exhibited, among others, at Legnica’s Satyrykon Gallery, the Dramatyczny Theatre Gallery, and the Zagłębie Mediateka in Sosnowiec. She publishes on her Instagram and Facebook profiles The Girl Who Fell on Earth.

Magda Danaj – Porysunki (Afterdrawings)

Graphic artist and illustrator, born in 1979. She lives in Gdańsk, a city she loves, though she’d prefer to live in sunny Spain. Her Afterdrawings, created for the last 15 years, are small-scale graphic forms reflecting her conscious and unconscious mind as well as her unfathomed practical wisdom. She has published her works in many places, collaborating with various bodies, drawing works about everything, nothing, and anything. She is not likely to stop in the foreseeable future.

Marta Frej – Marta Frej's Memy (Mems)

Painter, illustrator, cultural event organiser, president of Kulturoholizm foundation. She won recognition as the author of feminist online memes combining brilliant moralising humour with masterful graphics. Born in 1973 in Częstochowa, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. Winner of the 2015 ‘Spectacles of Equality’ Award of the Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka Foundation for defence of women’s rights and gender equality, as well as the 2017 O!lśnienia award in the category of art. Co-author (with Agnieszka Graff) of the book Memes and Graphs. Gender, Dough, and Sex (2015, in Polish), author of the comic Camel Girls and the book 120 Faces of Marta Frej (both in 2021). Her most popular graphics with captions depict women’s life in contemporary Poland. Her works in painting form have been exhibited in galleries throughout Poland.

Małgorzata Halber – Bohater (The Hero)

Writer and graphic artist, born in 1979. She graduated in philosophy from the University of Warsaw and studied graphic art at Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts. Co-author (with Olga Drenda) of Book about Love, the novel Worst Person in the World, and (since 2012) of the comic The Hero, created using purely analogue tools on recycled paper. Her works emphasise the elements of dirt, stains, and errors. The Hero was first printed as a book by Znak and later self-published (2021). Halber’s texts have appeared in such dailies and magazines as ‘Polityka’, ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’, ‘Codziennik Feministyczny’, ’Dwutygodnik’, and many others.

Karolina Plewińska – Szarosen (Grey Dreams)

The author of a colourful online comic series, funny and sad in the same time. Her works deal with social and psychological topics with harmful stereotypes, child abuse, lack of acceptance and the faults of the educational system. Plewińska has created, among others, the billboard designs 'Love me, Mum and Dad', the book Poor Eater and the comic Fat One, which teach us to understand kids and teens. Her works can be viewed on her Facebook @szarosen and Instagram @szarosen_art profiles.

Agnieszka Szczepaniak – PaplaLala (ChatterDoll)

A Tricity-based graphic artist who has presented her comics at exhibitions in Poland (Warsaw, Bydgoszcz, Łódź, and the Tricity) as well as abroad (Riga, Kaunas, Linz, and Stockholm). An exhibition of her drawings inaugurated Poznań’s No Women No Art Gallery. Her graphic works have been presented at Cracow’s Łącznik Gallery, the Łódź Central Museum of Textiles, and Szczecin’s ORIENT Gallery. Exhibitions of her comics accompanied Poznań’s V-Day, the Fantasy Days in Wrocław and the ¿UNDERGROUND/INDEPENDENT? festival in Białystok. Her illustrations have been printed in such dailies and magazines as ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’, ‘Dziennik Bałtycki’, ‘Wysokie Obcasy’, ‘Metro’, and others. She has created comic cycles for polki.pl and e-teatr.pl websites and for the Wybrzeże Theatre in Gdańsk. Her paplaLAla illustrations accompanied a cervical cancer awareness campaign in the Pomeranian Province. Her drawings have been published in anthologies of Polish Female Comics: Double portrait and its Polish-language equivalent. Her works can be viewed at www.paplalala.com.

Kamila Szcześniak – Nieładnie (Not Nice)

Born in 1987, doctoral student and assistant lecturer at the Inspiring Design Studio of the University of the Arts Poznań (UAP). She graduated in industrial design from the UAP (master’s degree in 2012, supervised by Prof. Bogumiła Jung). Active in social media since 2016 under the pseudonym ‘Nieładnie’, she publishes cartoons dealing with the prose and absurd elements of everyday life, the boundless human foolishness (including her own). March 2021 saw the publication of her book (in Polish) titled Not Nice. The Great Book of Fuckup, comprising a selection of her best recent drawings.

Monika Szydłowska – Na Emigracji (In Emigration)

Born in Warsaw, at age 23 she moved to Poznań, where she graduated from the Faculty of Graphic Art at the Academy of Fine Arts. Soon after her 30th birthday she left Poland for Scotland, which proved to be an earthly paradise with nice people and medicines for free. Her first drawings were created partly out of boredom, and partly as a reaction to ever new adventures in the foreign world. In 2013 she launched the ‘Na Emigracji’ website. Her book Do You Miss Your Country? was published two years later by Centrala. Monika conducts art&craft and keep-fit classes at a day centre for the disabled. A Zodiacal Aries, she is now 39, has a Scottish partner and two kids. She is not planning to return to Poland.

Marta Zabłocka – Życie na kreskę (Living on Tick)

She runs the graphic website zycienakreske.com, creates illustrations, and works as a desktop publisher. Social activism is a major aspect of her life. She likes her neighbours, loves cycling and a certain Micro-Homey.


The opening night

The exposition