Own technique, paper, 61 x 88 cm
Aleksandra Waliszewska's work works on the principle of baroque turpism: we encounter our fears, grotesque figures, bizarre events, which we nevertheless want to look at endlessly. Strangeness and anxiety, after all, give a kind of delight in communing with a deformed and thus interesting form of reality. In Waliszewska's work, the macabre and the grotesque have their source not only in primordial fear, but above all in ancient visual culture - the artist draws on motifs known from medieval miniatures, early Renaissance (especially Northern) art and provincial Baroque, where the beast of hell frightened and at the same time attracted the eyes of the faithful believing not only in the Bible, but also in wraiths.
Mithusia, the artist's white cat and also her muse, sometimes appears in Waliszewska's works. Sometimes she reveals her tormenting nature towards other animals, and sometimes she stands up to a heroic knightly battle in the guise of a gothic unicorn. Once she was portrayed on her deathbed - and was accompanied to hereternalsleep by Kurt Cobain himself....
