Teresa Gierzyńska, Ksenia Gryckiewicz, Julia Kowalska,
Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, and Wiktoria
The Shield
Nov 29, 2024 – Feb 1, 2025
Opening:
Friday, November 29
5 – 8 pm
The show is accompanied by an exhibition text by Liberty Adrien, curator at Portikus, Frankfurt.
We're happy to announce the upcoming group show at Gunia Nowik Gallery, The Shield, which will feature works by Teresa Gierzyńska, Ksenia Gryckiewicz, Julia Kowalska, Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, and Wiktoria.
In times of uncertainty, The Shield highlights themes of solidarity and mutual support among women. Through references to rituals, archetypes, and natural cycles, the artists explore resilience, transcendence, and the evolving role of women in today’s world.
To welcome the 2025 New Year, we invite you to a special performance by the Belarusian female choir Spievy on Saturday, January 18, 6 pm, featuring traditional ethnic melodies rooted in the archaic language of East Slavic heritage.
We look forward to seeing you soon!
The Swell That Never Fades
by Liberty Adrien
The horizon offers no promise of beginnings or endings. Clouds, heavy with rain yet to fall, hang low over the coast. Night settles as she stands at the edge of the shore, her feet slowly sinking into the shifting sand. The wind bites at her skin, and the taste of salt lingers on her lips as she watches the sea breathe in and out.
A wave rises, its crest briefly shrouded in the dim light of the moon, then falls. Another follows in its wake. This swell, she thinks, may have been born of a distant storm, far beyond sight, in the vast and indifferent ocean. Or perhaps it was here that it began—deep within her, in a place she cannot quite name.
The sea sways with a steady, hypnotic rhythm, its roar blending with her sorrow. How many times, she wonders, has her life been shaped by relentless forces beyond her control? A woman’s existence, carried by the tides, swept away by currents both near and impossibly distant.
Creeping like shadows in the night, long-buried words of contempt and bitter remnants of the past rise to the surface. With them, her storm gathers strength, poised to splinter her world into countless shards. Her heart rumbles like thunder, and her thoughts cut as sharply as shattered glass.
The water brushes against her feet as whispers emerge with the swell. Faint at first, then growing louder, she hears the voices of women with stories to tell. Their songs speak of battles fought, fleeting victories, and storms weathered. Traveling across oceans, they leave fragments of hope along the shores.
Her eyes trace the faint, nearly imperceptible thread of the horizon. She pictures women in distant lands, standing just like her, their feet sinking into the sand, their bodies bracing against the wind. Beneath the weight of the heavy clouds, she is not truly alone—not anymore. She senses their presence in every wave, in the ceaseless ebb and flow of the swell that refuses to fade.
The endless rhythm of the sea carries her thoughts, its dance a shield, protecting the depths from the chaos beyond. Waves, she ponders, are like sisters across time, each one pushing the next forward. In a perpetual cycle of breaking and release, they return again and again, their collective strength reshaping contours once deemed immutable.
Suddenly, the darkness of the night no longer feels absolute. From the tumult of the swell—boundless, untamable, an echo of her storm—she begins to draw strength and protection. It is in that moment she understands: she is the ocean, the wave, the force that endures, the shield.
Teresa Gierzyńska
Born in 1947 in Rypin, Poland. In 1964–65 she went for an educational art trip to Canada. In 1965–1971, she studied at the Department of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in prof. Tadeusz Łodziana’s sculpture studio and prof. Oskar Hansen’s Solids and Planes design studio. Since the late 1960s, photograph and its duplication techniques such as thermocopy or photocopy have become the main tool for the artist's exploration of the representation of women and their role marked by society. Her most known cycle About Her proposes an investigation or introspection within the female identity, the mystical version of feminism, where the photographs are accompanied by adjectives – meaningful titles given to the pictures: Dangerous, Independent, Unapproachable, Mature, Cold, Worried, Thirty Years Old, Useless, Left-handed, Velvety, Caresses, Full of Hope. She lives and works in Warsaw.
Ksenia Gryckiewicz
Born in 1989 in Grodno, Belarus. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Rooted in the classical tradition of the Belarusian school, her work builds upon this foundation to shape her painterly practice. She uses painting as a medium to explore the complexities of human relationships, the dynamics of community, and the interplay of individual and collective experiences. Often incorporating her own image, she examines social roles, expectations, and the tensions between power and empathy. Her works are informed by the feminist ethics of care, offering intimate yet universal narratives that invite viewers to engage with themes of identity and connection. In 2023, she joined the Spievy choir, a Belarusian female collective, where she explores the intersections of voice, sound, and painting. This communal experience complements the solitary nature of her studio work, allowing her to delve into the dynamics of shared and individual expression. Her works balance introspection with collective engagement, offering layered metaphors that reflect the complexities of human experience. She lives and works in Warsaw.
Julia Kowalska
Born in 1998 in Warsaw, Poland. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Using seductive aesthetics, Kowalska delves into the fluid nature of the Self and the complexities of desire, examining beauty and femininity within hierarchical structures and the biopolitics of the body. She focuses on the relationships and dependencies among women—sisters, mothers, and daughters—highlighting the dual nature of tenderness and care intertwined with domination and oppression. This tension between passive and active attitudes is central to her work, emphasizing the evolving perspective of the female gaze and illuminating the complex and often contradictory nature of female experiences and identities. She lives and works in Warsaw.
Sana Shahmuradova Tanska
Born in 1996 in Odesa, Ukraine. She spent most of her childhood in the village of Podillia, Ukraine. In 2010, she graduated from a school of ballet, and in 2013, she and her family emigrated to Toronto, Canada. There, in 2020, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from York University. In 2020, Sana Shahmuradova decided to move to Kyiv, where she continues to work in the fields of painting and graphics. She uses various materials in her work, such as wood, burlap, canvas, and oil paints. Sana is also exploring her origins and using trauma as a tool to communicate and connect with her ancestors. Her latest works examine transgenerational traumas and the role of dreams in them, often highlighting the violence and atrocities committed against civilians and nature by the aggressor state, Russia. Her paintings were recently shown at the DHAKA Art Summit in Bangladesh, Mystetsky Arsenal in Kyiv, and EVA International Biennial in Limerick, Ireland. 2024 is marked by the presentation of her works at the Biennale of Sydney. She lives and works in Kyiv.
Wiktoria
Born in 1991 in Lublin, Poland. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She creates performative installations, objects, and ephemeral traces, where sculpture embodies elements such as stone, plants, and the human body. Her works invite audiences to interact with natural materials, establish rituals, and engage in intimate experiences that seek to rekindle a physical connection with nature. Her projects have been exhibited in venues including the Sursock Museum in Beirut, Pudong Art Museum in Shanghai, MUCEM in Marseille, Museum of Photography in Riga, CloudSeven in Brussels, Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, HKW in Berlin, the Louvre Auditorium in Paris. She has received numerous awards, including the Oscar Barnack Newcomer Leica Award (2015), Prix pour la Photographie de la Fondation des Treilles (2016), Coming OUT Best Diplomas, Warsaw (2016), Prix Madame Figaro, Discovery Award Public Choice at the Rencontres d’Arles Festival (2018), Talent Contemporains François Schneider Foundation (2019), and the Art of Change Prize, Paris (2021). She lives and works in Paris.
Special thanks to Syrena Real Estate and HOP Chmielna for supporting the exhibition.
