BODY LANGUAGE

" In the Body Language series (2023), body fragments become signs of a mysterious, unknown pictorial language or alphabet, in which shapes, contours and colours are equally important, and seem to enjoy considerable independence here, autonomizing and wandering over backgrounds and body fragments.

(…) Mierzejewska's fascination with the body has something deeply disturbing in itself, like all fascination, some mysterious, dark realm. It is a very primordial, source dimension inherent in the Latin term fascinatio. Pascal Quignard writes: "Fascination mows down the speech like the Grim Reaper mows down the life. Fascination is the blind spot of language. Fascinated gazes are always cast from behind." In Mierzejewska's paintings, it is not only about the etymological and cultural contexts hidden in the word fascination and explored so interestingly by Quignard, but also about the fact that human beauty, beauty and gracefulness seem to be something dangerous and unobvious in them, they arouse distrust, make us stay vigilant and are sometimes threatening. The artist seems to be saying that beauty is a costume or a mask that needs to be removed in order to see what is hidden underneath, what is the essence of a person's bodily identity. It is completely different in the case of the animals (e.g. big predatory cats) that appear in the artist's paintings – their beauty can be menacing, the grace of their movements mesmerising, but there is nothing inappropriate or suspicious about it."

MŚ

2023

© 2024 XY ANKA MIERZEJEWSKA