Cecilia Malik (b. 1975), Plaque ,,Oder"; 2022

Acrylic, board; 40 x 55 cm
Signed on the back: Cecylia Malik ,,Sisters of the Rivers" 2022/ ODRA edition 9/10

Cecylia Malik - Polish artist, performer, environmental activist, educator, curator of contemporary art, academic lecturer, filmmaker. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow where she received a diploma with distinction in the atelier of Prof. Leszek Misiak and postgraduate curatorial studies at the Jagiellonian University. In 2002 she was awarded the scholarship of the Mayor of the City of Cracow for Young Artists. She co-founded the "Art Farm", an art institution that is a common platform for artists and curators. Founder of the Center for Contemporary Art Squirrel, collectives: Mothers of Polish Women in Logging and Sisters of the River. In 2018, she was awarded the Katarzyna Kobro Prize. She is the author of "6 Rivers" (2012, "Paradise on Earth" (2015) and "Sister Rivers" (2021). In her work, Cecilia Malik combines happening and performance with themes dedicated to community building and attention to the environment. Her works have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Zderzak gallery, the Bunkier Sztuki gallery in Krakow, the University of Rochester in the USA, the Krakow House in Nuremberg, the Kunstverein zu Assenheim and the Abbey Museum in Tyniec, among others. The artist's works can be found, among others, in the collection of the Bunkier Art Gallery or the Museo de Arte Contenporared de Castilla y Leon as well as many private collections at home and abroad.

Blue placards with the names of rivers have been a distinctive element of the River Sisters' happenings and performances since the collective's inception. Cecylia Malik invites women, friends, aunts, grandmothers, sisters to participate in a workshop on painting selected rivers closest to their hearts with a typeface inspired by that of Polish road signs, with a layout of three lines of waves under the inscription, which the artist herself already sketches from her hand with great skill as if it were already her own signature. The plywood substrate prepared by Piotr Dziurdzię is also the color of the letters. The plaques carry the stories of each of the marked rivers, taken out of the context of road posts, and participate in protests but also in celebrations throughout Poland and the world.