Body Against Body is a story of becoming: of a daughter’s relationship with her mother, with her own body, and the slow unfolding of what it means to “be in the world”. Rooted in personal experience, the narrative intertwines with themes drawn from literature, especially the prose of Annie Ernaux, whose work places the body at its very core.
Alongside paintings, the exhibition features sculptural objects made from hand-stitched fragments of sewing patterns, deconstructing the idea of costume. Given the exhibition’s proximity to the sea, traces of summer imagery also emerge—and sunburnt skin becomes the material for one of the newly created works.
Martyna Pinkowska was born in 1997. She graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in 2022, where she defended her diploma exhibition Polly Pocket Syndrome. She works with painting and film, creates objects and installations. In her work, the artist reflects on what shapes her female identity. A feeling of uncertainty is the basis of her works, in which fantasy and reality intertwine. She finds recurring elements in her own experiences and those of women closest to her, recognising universal fears, anxieties and desires. Pinkowska explores how we navigate expectations and paradigms of femininity, focusing on the relationship between mother and daughter.
Martyna’s exploration of the body and skin draws from her personal experiences. Her struggle with body image and perception becomes a lens through which she examines broader cultural anxieties around physicality and identity. Her surreal compositions of fragmented, intertwined, and blurred figures tread the thin line between concealment and exposure, vulnerability and strength. She questions how the body’s function as a site of comfort or discomfort shapes one’s self-image. Martyna explores to what extent is the body a costume and what does it mean to inhabit one’s skin.
Her practise delves into the symbolic potential of clothing, skin, and the act of dressing, or undressing, oneself. Martyna draws on the body as a vessel for emotional and cultural meanings, exploring its role as a “costume” that both defines and obscures identity. Her works invite contemplation of the ways we inhabit our bodies, the dissonance between how we see ourselves and how we are seen, and the material and emotional labor of self-presentation. She lives and works in Warsaw.