Window Wonderland 2025 – Freedom of Speech

Artist: Olga Szynkarczuk

@olgaszynkarczuk

Window Wonderland 2025 presents a new site-specific installation by artist Olga Szynkarczuk, responding to this year’s theme, “Freedom of Speech.” The work examines the often-unspoken invisibility experienced by women artists when they become mothers, transforming these silenced realities into sculptural, luminous, and environmentally conscious forms.

At the centre of the installation are two contrasting elements: kinetic paper lamps shaped like abstract pregnant bodies, and vibrant paintings on reclaimed fridge doors. The paper lamps represent the delicate exterior of the mother-artist—stretched, marked, and translucent—illuminated from within by pulsing LED lights that echo a mother’s heartbeat. Around them, hand-stitched seams, loose threads, and recycled paper surfaces reveal a body pushed to its limits yet still glowing with internal strength.

The reclaimed fridge doors, once essential domestic objects later discarded, stand in stark contrast. Their painted surfaces are bold, saturated, and unapologetically resilient, symbolising the mother-artist’s inner core: durable, layered, and indestructible. Together, the lamps and doors create a dynamic tension between fragility and power, disappearance and re-emergence.

Environmental responsibility is integral to the work. All fridge doors were rescued from landfill, the paper forms incorporate recycled drawings, and the installation uses low-energy LED lighting, merging sustainability with symbolic meaning.

Szynkarczuk’s installation transforms the window space into a glowing declaration of presence, offering visibility, voice, and renewed agency to mother-artists whose experiences too often remain unspoken.