11.01 – 5.02

curator: Bogusław Deptuła

mia ART GALLERY, Plac Solny 11, Wrocław

Toys’Voice is another attempt to comment on my surrounding reality. It is also another visual self-portrait , although once again unintentional. The toys speak or remain silent on my behalf. I was fascinated by their slightly clumsy and at the same time very expressive form; they were made several decades ago in good faith for children, and yet they contain something wonderfully ugly and extremely disturbing.

Natalya O.

 “Children should be seen and not heard”, not to mention toys. Natalya O. decided to give them voices, not yet audible, but written as in comic books, in which most of them have their origins. And when we read these sentences, we are quite surprised because it turns out that these are not very polite texts, and certainly not intended for toddlers or teenagers – the original addressees and recipients of these toys. The dialogues of the toys, although funny, are actually quite obscene.

Not for the first time, we encounter the phantasm of adults, about naughty and nice toys, one which, as soon as the light goes out, begin to lead a second, quite adult life, often wicked, sometimes even erotic. Dolls, bears, soldiers, dogs and cats – and let’s not forget the Nutcracker or Little Red Riding Hood – turn out to be fully fledged and full-blooded protagonists of previously undisclosed events.

/curator Bogusław Deptuła/

Natalia Okoń-Rudnicka – born in 1980 in Wrocław, graduated with distinction from the State Artistic Secondary School in Wrocław in 2000 and Wrocław Academy of Fine Arts from Industrial Design Department in 2005. Obtained diploma in laboratory of visual communication under Prof. Mieczysław Piróg, additional Painting Faculty under Prof. Krzysztof Skarbek. She is interesed in painting, illustration, commercian and artistic graphics. She is a teacher in school which she’s graduated.