“A View of One’s Own”

Paintings by Paulina Stasik, a Krakow-based painter, though at first glance filled with allegories and symbols, are rooted in the artist’s own autobiography. Together they form an intimate, if disguised, self-portrait unfolding over time. The year 2025 marks a turning point for her, as she turns 35. We encounter her symbolically at a crossroads – suspended between what has been and what is yet to come. The exhibition, which presents her latest paintings and works on paper, is an attempt to reckon with the path so far – with childhood, the experience of growing up, the memory inscribed in the body, and the relationships that have shaped the artist’s life. It is also a moment of taking over the narrative and rewriting it, not only through images, but also through a literary text published parallel to the exhibition as her first book. Taken together, the works create a symbolic map of the artist’s journey, referring to the motif of the “stages of a woman’s life,” present in iconography from the Middle Ages through the 19th century. Paulina Stasik consciously draws on this traditional allegory in order to transform it and challenge its patriarchal character. Instead of reproducing the model of a woman’s life as a passive sequence of roles imposed by social norms, she presents a process of self-discovery, coming to terms with the past, and reclaiming agency. Although her paintings grow out of personal experience, they touch on universal questions – such as the search for identity, maturation, and inner transformation. The exhibition is accompanied by the launch of the book Self-Portrait with Tongue Sticking Out, designed by Agata Biskup, featuring the artist’s own commentaries as well as critical texts by Natalia Gierowska and Michalina Sablik.