I have been offered a possibility to collaborate with a wonderful space Willa Art Deco on a project, which will be a performance monolog based on Tamara Łempicka’s life as well as a collaboration between Tamara’s grand daughter and the owners of the estate resulting in a recording of Tamara’s paintings being “finished” and captured on film by a hand of…another artist trying to put themselves in Tamara’s shoes. I have been mesmerised by her work for some time as she lived and worked at the same time as Zofia Stryjenska, who I have been a huge fan of for years now. The work of Tamara Łempicka is synonymous with the Art Deco style, characterized by bold portraits with geometric forms and an elegant, often luxurious quality. Zofia Stryjeńska, on the other hand, focused on folk and historical themes, illustrating Polish legends and fairy tales in a style inspired by folklore, which distinguishes her work from Łempicka’s aesthetic. I feel like I’m hugely interested in blending the work of two women together. I’m a huge fan of the boldness and brightness and spontaneity of polish folklore but I am equally interested in the luxurious elegance and cold, graphic minimalism of Tamara’s work. I am also facinated by the two women’s lives and complex personalities and the extreme ambitions to become successful in their fields. Lempicka placed a high value on working to produce her own fortune, famously saying, “There are no miracles, there is only what you make” (Passion by Design: The Art and Times of Tamara de Lempicka by by Kizette De Lempicka-Foxhall) and Stryjenska ended up abandoning her family to continue creating art and making money, which she then used mostly to send to her three children to support them (“Stryjeńska. Diabli nadali“by Angelika Kuźniak). I am fascinated by life stories of strong, independent women, who were able to use their art as a way to function as artists in a male dominated industry. I would also like to explore the painting techniques they used as the graphic, smooth aspect of their paintings seems to resonate with my own inner perfectionism and neatness. I feel like the more expressive, spontaneous and uncontrolled I get, the more I have a need to counter balance that with neat, clean surfaces. Even yesterday, when I first approached painting a sculptural form with acrylics, and initially just painted stripes allover the place, but then I suddenly stopped and wanted to clean the edges, make an even frame using tape. It’s like I’m alwasys balancing between chaos and control. I was also recently told I have a lot on masculine energy and wondered if I should feel offended. But I felt somehow it was a complement as if it meant strength and toughness. When reading about Lempicka I sense in her coldness and inability to express love something familiar, as if the only way I’m able to express love is by doing something for someone, or by telling them off. I am however quite happy with the sculptural painting I did yesterday, even though it doesn’t look like anything Lempicka or Stryjenska would do but it just sems to express the beginning of that chaos/control idea.
