Malwina Chabocka

Malwina Chabocka, [pron. Mal-VEE-na HA-BOT-SKA], graduated from Central Saint Martins in London and Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland. For a number of years, she worked across several disciplines, gradually identifying her area and language of expression, before she made painting her primary focus. Author of two children's books, she developed site-specific art events, graphic design for short films, and scenography for theatre and operatic productions, including "The Burial at Thebes" opera at Shakespeare's Globe in London and "The Little Prince" musical at the Musical Theatre ROMA in Warsaw. She has participated in solo and group shows in the UK, Portugal, Poland and Netherlands. Since 2022, she has been living in The Hague, Netherlands.

GENERAL

In my painting, I steer away from narrative and directness. I want the viewer to respond to my work on an emotional level and interpret it through the filter of his own experience and imagination.

The way I see it, painting is an act of putting paint onto canvas through instinct, intention and accident. It's about finding the perfect balance between exercising control and letting go. Painting is not about manufacturing a best-selling product embellished with marketable slogans and trending hashtags. It's a lifelong process of exploration and experimentation.

My work focuses on humans, our psyche and soma, and is an observation of how the body and bodily instincts both express and facilitate the emotional and cognitive evolution that happens continuously in one's life. I am fascinated by the human mind, emotions and everything we don't express and admit not just to others, but also to ourselves. I am inspired by the neuroscientific research on feelings being the direct perception of the internal state of the body and Freudian theory of the ego being derived from bodily sensations.

Human sexuality, being one of the fundamental drives behind everyone's feelings, thoughts, and behaviours, has been a large area of exploration both in the art and academic context. When I lived in London, I was immersed in the alternative adult scene and I wrote my BA thesis on fetishism and then later my MA thesis on masochism as a creative force for artists.

In my painting, I also draw from my past experience of working in physical theatre and performance, where the body expresses a story in itself. Hidden desires, repressed feelings, haunting memories, shame, pain and longing; passions and needs which escape socially accepted norms and fight for their reason to exist -- I like to observe how all these secret inner tales make their way into flesh, and subsequently onto my canvas. I am drawn to the intersection of the rational mind with the most primary instincts, which we are so unsuccessfully trying to curb. Through my work, I am inviting the viewers to explore the nooks of their mind and embrace the complexity of our psychophysical existence.

I believe art can allows us to look at ourselves through a new lens, and help us reconnect with the vulnerable side of our human being. It's a place of reconnection - to ourselves and to others - and of expanding our notion of "we".

TECHNIQUE

I paint mostly in acrylics and occasionally use oils in certain areas of a painting. After years of working in oils, I moved to acrylics because I find that with their fast drying time and certain rigidity in application (as opposed to the smooth flow of oils), acrylics are much better suited to my needs. Unlike oils, acrylics require fast decision making, taking risks and embracing accidents. I value chance and subconsciousness as important factors in creating a work of art because as Francis Bacon said, the moment you know what to do, you're making just another form of illustration.

All my works are painted on cotton and linen canvas hand-stretched by myself on a wooden frame; I don't use cheap mass-produced ready canvases. This way, I have control over every aspect of my painting, and I have a relationship with the object from the very beginning, before I even pick up the brush.

INSPIRATIONS

My first inspirations were the dreamy and foreboding illustrations by the Polish artist Antoni Boratyński in the books I read as a child. I remember being genuinely scared of them and mesmerized at the same time. I strongly suspect that his surreal and menacing landscapes with fantastically scary figures made me develop a penchant for everything dark.

My biggest influence by far when it comes to painting has been Francis Bacon. I discovered his work in my early teens, though it was not until my twenties when I truly engaged with his painting. For me personally, there's nobody who was able to depict the intensity of human turmoil and pain so poignantly without actually illustrating it directly.

Then there's erotica - Balthus's unsettling depictions of preadolescence, dreamlike depictions of Egon Schiele's, Hans Bellmer's sexualised doll figures, as well as erotic couples in Japanese shunga prints which I discovered as an adult.

I've always been fond of fauvists and expressionists (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees van Dongen, Chaim Soutine, to name a few) with their wild colours and extraordinary energy of the paintbrush, and symbolists such as Edvard Munch and the excellent forgotten Polish painter Gustaw Gwozdecki.

I also have a penchant for the bizarre and surreal visual world in Jan Svankmajer's and Terry Gilliam's films, photography work of Alan Tex and Joel-Peter Witkin and the superimposition techniques used in silent movies of the 20s.