Anna Szpakowska-Kujawska – Droga do domu (The Way Home)

Curator: Joanna Kaźmierczak

26.05-15.06.2019

mia ART GALLERY / Fabryka Sensu

ul. Benedykta Polaka 21/4, Wrocław

26.05 | 01.06 | 08.06 | 15.06

12.00 - 15.00 

Droga do domu (The Way Home) is an exhibition of works by Anna Szpakowska-Kujawska – paintings, collages, objects – constituting a personal notation of insights experienced by the artist during her stays in a wooden house in Lasówka – a village located between the Bystrzyckie and Orlickie Mountains, on the picturesque Dzika Orlica riverbank. Those artworks express the reflection upon the very concept of home – uniting both the personal and universal aspects. The cabin in Lasówka is perceived by the artist as an inherent part of its surroundings – the experience of a sanctuary is inseparably intertwined with the feeling of an openness to the whole world of nature. The artists interprets the concept of home in terms of micro- and macroscale: as her ‘own place on Earth’ but also the Earth itself as her ‘own place’. Life amongst plants, animals, minerals, on a fertile soil – means living with one’s very own tribe. Szpakowska describes – in word and in picture – the animals and plants residing in Lasówka with an equal amount of tenderness as she does with her (human) friends and family members.

For Szpakowska, nature is a space of meditation. The very meaning of that meditation is to unify a variety of sensations – which can be best seen in her mosaic-like artworks, not only in collages but also in paintings and sculptures, called by the artist ‘Skrzydlaki’ (‘The Winged Ones’). Paradoxically, if there is a silence eventually emerging from such meditation, it is a silence in the eye of the storm.

Anna Szpakowska-Kujawska (b. 1931) – a paintress; creates also collages, ceramic sculptures, objects. Her works are well-recognizable in the city space of Wrocław (eg. the ceramic decoration of the façade of the Instituite of Mathematics at the University of Wrocław). She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, in years 1961-1978 was one of the members of the so-called Wrocław School (later: Wrocław Group). Lives and works in Wrocław, being an active promoter of the art of her father – Wacław Szpakowski. 

The exhibition is organized with the cooperation with Fabryka Sensu: the co-working space established by Lucyna Schumacher, designed to boost people’s creativity. A cup of coffee in the Intercontinental, a restroom in a closet, a jungle creeping into the room? There are more secrets of that place than that. This inspiring environment offers 300 m²  of space for a variety of events: courses, workshops, conferences, receptions, meetings with art and culture – everything that helps to break the everyday routine.