Contemporary Women: A Painting Series

Painting Cycle 2024-2025

„Contemporary Women” is a painting series in which I examine female presence and visibility in the contemporary world, both individually and socially. The works are an attempt to capture the tension between personal experience and collective narratives about womanhood. Technically, the project combines acrylic and oil painting with textiles.

One of the elements of the cycle is video work „Desal”, created during a family trip to Mauritania. The starting point was the traditional songs sung by women during wedding rituals. The footage focuses on the body, the voice, and presence—on what remains unsaid but is deeply imprinted in gestures and sounds. “Desal” does not reconstruct the event, but explores its emotional layers: the tension between joy and a profound life change, between community and individual experience. It is an intimate meditation on femininity—the kind that dances, supports, sings, and remembers.

The works are created with a specific phenomenon in mind. It affects tensions and the way of perception. The image begins to speak, and something that seems like a background suddenly becomes part of the composition. This is a way to test the relationships between form and experience.

The work thematically focuses on the complexity of female identity—what is internal, inherited, and not immediately obvious. I’m interested in the body as memory. Role as something that sticks. Intimacy that sometimes hurts. And that whole layer of social expectations that somehow get under your skin. I don’t tell stories directly—I build spaces of meaning. Through symbol, through texture, through the presence of material in space.

This cycle is an important stage for me. I'm developing my language here – somewhere between painting and textiles. I'm combining aesthetics with engagement – I want the works to be sincere, but also well-constructed. This is a moment where I'm testing myself as an artist. I'm searching for my own narrative structures. I'm looking for an image that opens something up – rather than just closing it down in meaning.

OVERVIEW OF ARTWORKS:

“Desal” – 2024, painting on panel, four works, 30×42 cm.