Karolina Jabłońska

Some Names Have Been Changed

Welcome to the Dark Side

The paintings of Karolina Jabłońska (b. 1991, Niedomice, Poland; lives and works in Kraków, Poland) often depict everyday situations that capture the awkwardness of certain common activities. As the artist has put it, “the paintings come from small sensory and emotional impressions.” Yet, the personal is also political: metaphors for emotional states, inherent in these paintings are references to the role of women, the existential threat to their bodies and restrictions imposed by political realities. Monumental depictions of faces—a striking portrayal of her own features that has come to function as a stand-in for the artist but also for a more generalized alter ego—suggest strong emotions but also evoke a visceral response in the viewer.

The monograph Some Names Have Been Changed documents Jabłońska’s development over the last several years and her unique response to social, political, and aesthetic changes that occurred in Poland—a country whose former political power became notorious for its anti-feminist agenda and various forms of exclusion. The book will comprise three experimental essays by Robert Kusek, Monika Świerkosz, and Wojciech Szymański to theorize Jabłońska’s work, especially in the context of her autofictional examination of the embodied self.