Who did they build our apartments for

Skeletons in the closet and fairies in the sewage Starting with modernist architects, the perception of architecture has been reduced almost entirely to thinking about geometry, form, and utility. The maximization of profit or maximization of comfort. In her latest works, Maryna Sakowska treats architecture as a theme but also as a stage set inhabited by human and non-human creatures. Peering into pipes, toilets, behind closets, and under the floors, the artist reveals to the viewer a world that is not immediately available upon first glance. What is hidden from us is not only a secret that makes us blush, as Maryna also exposes the brutal mechanisms of control and power. Peering through miniature Gothic windows, we see beings capable of giving birth whose bodies are subjected to constant exploitation and control. In building cross-sections, internal organs and plants are interwoven in a curious symbiosis. Looking at a given painting, one is never certain about what is alive and what is dead. Do the pipes breathe and pump blood, or are they merely structural elements? Sepulchral motifs appear surprisingly full of life. Coffins serve here as garden beds and wall units. The architecture of housing blocks or agricultural buildings seamlessly blends with Gothic constructions. In the artist's surrealizing illustrations, it is the juxtapositions and the tensions they create that evoke a specific unease. Simultaneously, using humor and the distinctive "cuteness" characteristic of her work, Maryna dulls our vigilance. Thus, we are presented with a story that balances on the edge of dream and reality, truth and fiction, where the surrounding urban landscape is not an amicable place for life. Here and there, plants sprouting between the cracks in the boards can be found, but without sharp senses one may easily drown in the toilet. Gabi Skrzypczak Maryna Sakowska (1992). She works with painting, drawing, objects and installations. She graduated from the faculty of Multimedia at the Academy of Arts in Szczecin, Poland (2019) and the faculty of Painting at the University of Arts in Poznan, Poland (2017). She used to work as an assistant in Daniel Rycharski’s studio of sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Szczecin (2020-21). Painting is for her an attempt at understanding her own experiences and emotional states as well as a laboratory in which she examines various cultural and social phenomena, including but not limited to feminist critique, queer theory, politics of the body and the production of historical narratives.