“Inner Edge’’ at Import Export brings together a collection of eight paintings selected by the artist. Created over the last 18 months, the works broach subjects of personal boundaries, self-worth, bodily and emotional safety – marking the artist’s indirect yet visceral response to the events and the aftermath of October 2020, when Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal introduced a near total ban on abortions in the country.
Import Export is excited to present “Inner Edge” – a solo exhibition by Dominika Kowynia (b. 1978, Sosnowiec, PL).
Primarily a figurative oil painter, Kowynia received her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in 2003. Awarded a PhD from the same academy in 2010, she continues teaching at the same faculty. Over the years, Kowynia developed a singular language of expression. This affective realism is rendered through vigorous colour planes, juxtaposed with infrequent impastos and dramatic use of light and shadow. In her canvasses, Kowynia echoes her interests in politics, feminist theory, ecology, collective memory and trauma studies. Drawing inspiration from personal photography archives, political events and literature – i.e. writing by Rebecca Solnit, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood, Ngozi Adichie – the artist delivers a critical vision of the current times set in the context of her inner landscapes.
“Inner Edge’’ at Import Export brings together a collection of eight paintings selected by the artist. Created over the last 18 months, the works broach subjects of personal boundaries, self-worth, bodily and emotional safety – marking the artist’s indirect yet visceral response to the events and the aftermath of October 2020, when Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal introduced a near total ban on abortions in the country.
Coinciding with the exhibition at the gallery are two institutional exhibitions featuring Kowynia’s works: a solo exhibition entitled “The Second Body” at BWA Olsztyn City Gallery and a group exhibition “Who will write the history of tears. Artists on Women’s Rights” at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (both on view until the end of March).
To celebrate International Women’s Day, we invited Berlin-based writer Phoebe Blatton to collaborate with us. Her essay on Kowynia’s new body of work you can find [here].
