Polymer; 48 x 55 x 20 cm base 10 x 32 x 15
Signature on back: Martha Mulawa 1/1
ed. 1/1
Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Faculty of Industrial Forms. Scholarship holder at Vysoká škola uměleckoprůmyslová v Praze and l'École des beaux-arts de Toulouse. She has won numerous design competitions. A Krakow-based artist, she grew out of her Puławy roots and is in love with the Tatra Mountains. Lately she has been creating mainly sculptures and installations, previously the author of unique batiks - works of art animated by light. As an initiator and organizer of artistic endeavors, she is eager to share her passion with her audiences, easily engaging more participants and co-creators of such projects as "Inspired by Szukalski," she also participated in two editions of the Mountain of Literature Festival, organized by the Olga Tokarczuk Foundation. She is usually inspired by deeply and multilevelly felt nature, which can be seen in most of the artist's works. In her art projects she combines sculpture, installations, batik or painting with music, mapping, light and dance. Martha Mulawa's works are also widely appreciated and used in applied art. She has presented her works in more than sixty solo and group exhibitions, including: Mulawa - Mitoraj at the Museum of Magical Realism "Ochorowiczówka" in Wisla. Her works have found their way into private collections at home and abroad.
An intimate sculpture based on the juxtaposition of a human element - a female head with half-closed eyes with a legible plant fragment. The conventional orifice is a slice of the circular shape of the exotic leaf of the Amazonian Victoria, also known as the royal Victoria, a perennial in the mushroom family, reproduced in reinforced polymer plaster. Called "water plates" by local Indians, it has been grown in Europe since the mid-19th century in heated pools. This particular piece comes from the reconstructed exhibition of the Cracow Botanical Garden of the Jagiellonian University. In the wild, the leaves reach up to 4 meters in diameter and are capable of carrying an adult on the surface of the water.
The juxtaposition of the classical motif of a smoothly treated face with the openwork richness of the natural form creates a new quality. The antique smoothness corresponds with the late Gothic, though created by nature, drawing of dismembered ribs. In order not to lose anything of such perfection, the artist used casting, capturing the delicate structure of a leaf that no longer exists. This is Martha Mulawa's most characteristic way of creating unique works of art: immortalizing the effects of the elements and enriching them with the human factor, thus giving the viewer the opportunity to observe energy flows between different worlds. And while nature without man can certainly cope, man without contact with nature languishes and sinks into nothingness.