Stepmother

2018-2020

Mythological scenarios have been given to us since birth: in the voice of an adult who reads bedtime stories, through popular gender-oriented animated films, in mass cinema. They are aggressive and demanding. They sprout readymade schemes and creep unnoticed into not-dreamlike human life. Thus, mythology offers a certain set of female images and scenarios. A common motif in Western European mythological conscience is the opposition between a caring and loving mother and a cold, evil, insatiable stepmother and, in turn, a defenseless and virtuous stepdaughter. The motif of a tree is also endowed with feminine qualities, arising as a source of life, giving fruit and providing a shelter.

The work discloses the experience of being a stepmother, of loving somebody else’s child every day and being angry that someone from the outside has violated this already fragile order of things with his intrusion. This is a reflection on one’s own life, with its sensations and experiences associated with the attempts to relinquish fairytale-like tragedies. Escaping from forged maternity, from responsibility and fear, I find myself in the woods amongst the trees, myself becoming like a girl — the heroine in a fairytale, persecuted by evil forces. On the branches, I find magic objects — lost children’s things, carefully collecting them in hope of finding something that was found to be deprived. Losing to new family scenarios, I linger on moments of alienation which are inevitable in the relationships of close people. Again, I am convinced that it is impossible to slip away from the power of one over another, based on the fact that between relatives exists something that is impossible to see.

With the help of photography, I am constructing a pregnancy, looking for the missing source of maternal love. I paint children’s things in coloured light, illuminated by sunlight. In the process of creating join portraits, I form a model of relationships, again making sure that each depends on how much one chooses to invest in it.