So there was this element of surprise when, after a few emails exchange and having to deal with cancelling the transport as I preferred to transfer the artworks myself I suddenly found out nobody will be there to help me install. Luckily I had my husband and his cousin and her husband with me, otherwise this whole thing would have been an absolute disaster. There was absolutely no way that me and my husband could have done this by ourselves and on top of that there was the fact that he had to go to the airport after and I had to go pick up our kids from school. So I was just a bit mesmerised by the lack of support I guess. Luckily, we managed, what really helped was the fact we put the magnets on the fridges ahead of time so we were able to join most of them for the hanging not only with magnets but also with angle brackets. In the end the drilling in the ceiling and fridges was the longest and I am very happy the magnets worked as well as the paper lamps(which took about 2days each to make) were hanging so beautifully and looking radiant with the colour light bulbs inside of them, like the beating hearts of the mum and the baby. So I guess my lesson here would be to never trust when someone from a gallery says there will be someone there to help but to prepare for the fact that I will need to do everything by myself or with my own team. Either way just really excited right now and can’t wait for the opening.
LESS THAN ONE DAY BEFORE THE OPENING
So I’m less than one day away from my first central London group exhibition in a window of a gallery in Holborn at The Bomb Factory Art Foundation. I’m one of around 10 other artists who are exhibiting There together and I’ve been feeling really excited about this and really honored to be chosen and I just thought you know what a special thing that’s happened to me and I’m feeling grateful and it’s so great. But then I got caught up looking at Instagram of another artist and someone from Poland just like me, someone 27 years younger than me who is just doing sooo incredibly well and not just the fact that they have 100,000 followers and they did this and that just the whole idea and concept behind the work and the amount of thinking that I can see has been put into the work and the devotion and just incredible amount of time that results in this incredible body of work. And I just suddenly felt so much jealousy, envy and anger as well as this feeling of unfairness you know thinking how different the life of an artist who devoted themselves solely to art and not having a family compared to someone like me who has a family and is trying to do art and even though I’m trying to do everything I can and as much as I can to focus on my art, I just I just feel I’ll never have this much time and this much freedom in my head which is always occupied about thinking about my kids and worried about my kids and making sure they’re OK not just physically but mentally as well and being there for them to support them. Just so much of my time and head space is occupied caring for them so that makes thinking about my art really hard. I think I’m feeling guilty and constantly working on forgiving myself for being quite selfish anyway putting so much time and devotion into my work, but at the same time it feels it’s never gonna be enough. It’s never gonna be as much time as other artists who don’t have families put into their work so I don’t know I guess the anger is just there and and a bit of feeling sorry for myself a bit of feeling life‘s unfair, because I made this choice and now there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing that will change this. There’s just the time that I have and and that’s it and and that anger and and jealousy and envy, I guess. But also I would feel so terrible if my kids knew this is how I feel, I don’t want them to know as I think it might be devastating for them, knowing that. At the same time I do feel so much stronger than before kids, less fearless, like when given the opportunity I will go for everything to succeed, to share my art with the world. And to show my kids that having a family doesn’t mean you can’t succeed as an artist. But there are times when I seriusly doubt that…