Paulina Ołowska
Mokosh and Friends (2023)
©️ Paulina Ołowska, courtesy of Pace Gallery
Paulina Ołowska’s world is a magical and terrifying one. In her large-scale paintings, she stages female deities and demons in the swamps, pine forests, and rivers of Poland as part of an ongoing exploration of Slavic folklore and the political and social histories of Eastern Europe. Drawing on fashion photography, Ołowska endows the gestures and poses prescribed to the female body with a new role.
As patriarchal traditions and neo-Slavic myths are enthusiastically marketed in contemporary Poland, Ołowska’s work makes a subversive claim. She taps into the same folklore’s demonic side, exploring the world of swamp demons, called mamunas or dziwożonas, literally “strange wives.” They are regarded as monstrous and sinister creatures, undead midwives, unmarried women, and abandoned children who terrorize the population. Ołowska rethinks these creatures’ power as guardians rather than malevolent beings, associating them with the mother goddess Mokosh and thus exploring a possible matriarchal layer in Slavic mythology running counter to the dominant Catholic patriarchy.
Paulina Ołowska (1976, Gdańsk, Poland) is an artist working with painting, collage, sculpture, video, installation, and performance. She engages with the political and social histories of Eastern Europe, American consumerism and pop culture, feminism, and the aesthetics of fashion ads. Recent solo exhibitions include: Kunsthalle Basel; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. Ołowska has also staged performances at Tate Modern, London; Carnegie International, Pittsburgh; and MoMA, New York. In 2014, she received the Aachen Art Prize. She lives in Mszana Dolna.
Oil on canvas, 220 × 336 cm
© Paulina Ołowska, courtesy Pace Gallery