In Zuzanna Romańska’s art, the act of creation is both a personal impulse and a deeply cultural ritual. With a mythic and introspective journey that spans painting, sound, sculpture, text, and moving image, her practice is rooted in the need to tell stories. Not just her own, but those inherited, silenced, or reshaped across generations and geographies. Drawing on sources as varied as medieval manuscript painting, Slavic folklore, and the polyphonic textures of wayang, Romańska builds hybrid cosmogonies populated by half-gods, liminal beings, and shifting forms.
Currently completing her studies at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, Romańska is already recognised for her complex, cross-media practice that resists rigid categorisation. As such, Contemporary Lynx decided to award her with the special mention at this year’s 14th edition of Nowy Obraz / Nowe Spojrzenie at the award gala back in May. This art prize, addressed to students and painting graduates from public universities and art institutes, is organised annually by the University of the Arts Poznań.
We invited Zuzanna to reflect on the privilege and peril of storytelling, the materiality of sound and symbol, the role of art as a “wandering image”, and her plans for both the present and the future. Whether working with egg tempera or invented languages, her work insists on fluidity, transformation, and the haunting echo of what remains unheard.
Maria Sarna: Your education has begun centred around visual forms of expression. Yet, today, apart from painting, you work with sculpture, writing, music, and animation. How has your relationship with the medium of painting changed over time, given this search?
Zuzanna Romańska: I have always had a heterogeneous nature when it comes to choosing the medium through which I wanted to address my chosen subjects. I don’t have a clear belief within myself that everything can be told and expressed exclusively within one discipline. When I was in art school, I wanted to translate the themes I was pursuing in painting into music and sound. However, I am not a trained professional. Instead, I am fascinated by the concept of atonality and transcending compositional conventions. I think I work quite painterly in music and aim rather to reflect the visual and its atmosphere. At the time, I was not satisfied with just developing studio subjects in painting. I had a strong need to create my own worlds, too, and to search for myself in them. I was not always met with full understanding and, admittedly, I wanted to explore purely technical issues in the visual arts as well, but the search for what was beyond that was still the most fundamental for me.
Along the way, I also became interested in writing and creating a micro-world within language itself, so these interdisciplinary paths were still strongly intertwined. The visual arts were and still are closest to me, but other media, in particular, have nuanced my approach to areas of art. I develop certain themes in painting, while I transfer other issues to the mediums of sculpture, text, film or music, but everything is a unique organism, made up of interconnected, intertwining networks. I am not an advocate of clear distinctions, which is probably also why I avoid considering my paintings as purely painterly – at the initial stage, I plan them as drawings, while at the same time they carry the trait of illustration and the stylisation associated with it.
“In fact, the possibility of storytelling is always a form of privilege.”
— Zuzanna Romańska
MS: You mention your fascination with the tale and the dynamics hidden within storytelling. Namely, you evoke the fragile nature of listening and the power of the storyteller. In your work, when do you identify with either of these sides? How do you respond to holding this power?
ZR: I see myself as a person who listens and translates, reports or reconstructs at the same time. I do not separate these processes. I approach my work with a plan, a sketch or at least the seed of one, but both the cosmogony I create and the formal solutions within the works of painting or from other areas have a rather fluid and changeable status. I also feel that when I stop listening, the danger of falsifying or misrepresenting the narrative is much greater. I am mainly inspired by the sphere of stories unheard or repressed as a result of various factors – traumatic relation to the event, oblivion or colonial impurities. When we listen to more than just the loudest voices, we get to know the more holistic face of the picture of which we are a part.
In fact, the possibility of storytelling is always a form of privilege. From my point of view, artists have always been caught in a balancing act between inner and outer voice, myth and imagination, impression and constatation. For me, the power of storytelling is imbued with horror because it requires constant vigilance. After all, we know not from today what a layer of violence and injustice the various mythologies in the European circle are laden with. Narratives shape reality because they transform our lenses.
MS: You consider visual images as most directly linked to our unconsciousness. With your experience in creating animation, do you find the story enriched or more complete if experienced through multiple senses – that is, multiple media? Or, can the sensorial restraint allow a deeper interaction with the work, considering painting or sound separately?
ZR: I think that a film work has the quality of a total work, a moving image at the same time accumulating many media in itself, but it is not the only way to capture a story fully. The work of Sergei Parajanov is one of the most vital inspirations for me. I think his films are the most precise example of how a narrative becomes complete through the interaction of different disciplines and giving each of them a unique meaning. But Parajanov also included significant fragments and scenes that can be considered as separate works, creating distinct parts of the story or having the potential to develop it in a completely different direction. He resorted to experimenting with forms separate from film, which to me is an all the more striking example that video is still only one of many possible paths.
Within my research, I treat the cosmogony of the borderland as a unifying point for realisations in different fields of art, but the same story has a completely different overtone and character depending on the medium used. It is one thing to tell a story within the confines of a painting and another in the realm of a three-dimensional object or sound alone. It is also of a different nature to carry out such a narrative within a text, although in textual works I avoid the precise nature of language and exact detail anyway – rather, I accumulate difficulties and rearrange elements of a textual image whose nature is constantly transforming.
I also take a parallel approach to guiding the narrative according to the field. At the same time, I don’t treat the story as completed in a painting, for example, so I come up with new plots, or invent alternative versions of events in the text, and pay attention to other details in the sculpture. The resulting understatements from this practice are also an important part of the narrative for me, a bit like the remnants of archaeological expeditions or implicit suggestions of what else might have happened.
MS: We have to ask about your ‘‘Z pyętra pyątego’’ poem, especially given its close ties with your visual language. We see a synthesis of several languages mirroring the hybrid figures in your painting. You also recite excerpts from the poem in your music. To what extent do your paintings owe their origin to this text? Do you wish for certain paintings to stand independently from it?
ZR: The multilingual synthesis not only refers to the vague nature of my characters, but to the hybridity of the created world in general. The starting point for this nature of language was for me to reflect on the hauntological dimension of storytelling, the evocation of history and the fact that languages are simply haunted by ghosts. Therefore, even though I am creating a separate language in my own way, it is still Polish, reconstructed once again through the influences of the Old Polish Baroque period, the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, Romantic and Young Polish stylisation, and finally through the futuristic character of neologisms or the more sharpened sources of Church Slavonic, other Slavic languages or Sanskrit. I think this world is a hybrid, because it will never really disconnect completely from the external influences of culture and myths, and in the same way, it will not disconnect from my associations, patterns and details.
As for the relationship between my paintings and the text, it is ever-present, but rather not based on the dependence of one medium on the other. More often, it is the painting that dictates what I would like to write. I also feel that when I write, it’s a bit like trying to paint without a brush. Of course, the textual layer of this world is important to me, and it would be hard not to point out that the very nature of working in text is quite different from painting.
However, I fully allow my works to be perceived in isolation from the text, because I believe that their absolute imposition would stand in contrast to my way of thinking about the fluid nature of images that shape our consciousness and culture. By creating separate wandering images in the text, I move between tropes and toposes found in cultural sources, so beyond the individual traits, they are still embedded in what is common to us. For this reason, I tend to avoid literally attaching long passages of text to images. As a rule, I use quotations from the text in the titles or subtitles, which develop the narrative in other fields.
“I don’t think mimeticism is the answer to every question, and for this reason, I also have a great deal of respect for art which, as a rule, transcends naturalism or which is governed by simply different criteria and canons.”
— Zuzanna Romańska
MS: In your work, we find reference to alchemy, with the recurring symbol of the egg or the presence of the fire element. What do you see as the role of the symbol or the archetype? How much agency do you feel you have as the storyteller, next to the power of symbols?
ZR: First of all, a symbol is most often considered in a purely textual context, because in human consciousness, however, it is always associated with some kind of definition. But for me, this is not a clear classification. A symbol has the function of a translator, because it transfers impressions that are often inexpressible into further linguistic associations, but in my opinion, this does not make it a tool that more accurately describes a culture’s imagery. On the contrary, I see in the symbol very strong layers of intuitiveness and an attempt to organise meanings by further layering of concepts. This is why I am particularly intrigued by the heterogeneous symbolic status of, for example, fire, which is on the borderline between destructiveness and warmth or light. Thus, I do not see symbolic definitions as complete explanations that could help in the reception of my works. Rather, I see them as having the potential to isolate further spaces of interpretation.
I similarly perceive archetypal figures, except that I see them as more systemised. I distinguish the recurring figures in my paintings as individual archetypes in my cosmogony. And by all means, they have a separate set of characteristics, attributes, spaces, phenomena, or symbols associated with them, but this distinction is also not strict, and their nature is quite fluid. I do not, however, feel that I produce symbols, archetypes and images entirely in isolation, nor do I go so far as to say that I have complete authority over them. On the one hand, they are as much mine as the persons of the drama, the characters created for the poem, can be mine. On the other hand, I think they themselves also want to say something.
MS: Apart from folk, you draw inspiration from the cultures of Indonesia, Japan or Siberia. In terms of aesthetics, you revive that of the early Renaissance and medieval miniature. Was it the formal elements that allowed you to bridge these cross-cultural inspirations?
ZR: The nomadic image, or at least the one we can associate with interpretations of Aby Warburg’s Atlas Mnemosyne, has an image that is quite heterogeneous. It is, therefore, natural for me to see the image in a state of limbo between influences set in different timelines and cultural circles. I am intrigued by the formal aspects of the works that do not derive from typically Western European imagery. By this, I mean not only the areas globally associated with the notion of the East, but also folk art in the area of Poland and its borderlands with Ukraine and Belarus.
I don’t think mimeticism is the answer to every question, and for this reason, I also have a great deal of respect for art which, as a rule, transcends naturalism or which is governed by simply different criteria and canons. I also think that we are living in such times when it would be most legitimate to give a nod to art that has often inspired the most famous European artists and distinct trends, but whose sources have been diluted in the narrative. Occurring in Javanese glass painting and in the puppets used in wayang kulit theatre, the multiplicity, or streamlined lines, had a clear influence on Art Nouveau in Europe. Japanese ukiyo-e left a lasting mark on Impressionist art. Examples could be listed endlessly, but what is more important to me is that, at the end of the day, there is still not enough awareness of these inspirations (perhaps to some extent, except for Japanese art, around which the concept of Japanism has developed).
However, I feel that considering art, which is not necessarily taught in art history classes, solely within the framework of aesthetics and form is insufficient for its full reception. As a result, our perception of art needs to be continually decolonised, including that of our own backyard. How we present the world is always linked to our perception, which is influenced by the culture, customs and traditions in which we grow up. I see any form of reference to areas outside my cultural circle as an area of great risk. I am not a fan of aesthetic borrowing, so I prefer dialogue or searching for points of contact – after all, the essence of images often remains common despite noticeable differences.
The local has the potential for universality, just as the universal is also contained in the personal. I am interested in why something has really been done differently from what my gaze might be used to. Why is there such a rhythm in a painting and not another? Why hasn’t microtonal music been adopted everywhere? There is no one right pattern by which to create. Wandering paintings do not have a single face, but hundreds of successive, constantly changing faces.
MS: At times, your compositions may appear as multiple stories intertwined. Does note-taking for their preparation constitute a fixed process? Are they born through drawing, or is it writing or sound that leaves its first mark?
ZR: It is not a reproducible process for me, although it is as constant as possible. The thing is, I often approach writing in waves, and sometimes an image becomes a reason to hang in front of it and write down another hundred pages of a poem, and sometimes a laconic note will be made about what might happen before sketching it. However, it is not always the note itself that contributes to the image; rather, it works as a simultaneous verbal note and sketch. Sketches are created in a similar way to text – either in parts or in a series of many drawings. Drawing is very important to me. I know it’s not a particularly painterly approach when it plays a pivotal role in a painting, but I find it very important to push that boundary between the drawing and painterly nature of a painting.
At the same time, it is also somewhat hybrid — after all, a painting is always the result of layering both drawing and word influences, expression, imagery and the more intangible aspects of the work. I allow myself, through drawing, to plan my paintings and consider this process as another distinct form of storytelling. However, this doesn’t mean that the plan is invariable – many times I interfere with the initial concept and develop the narrative in other ways. It is less common for me to start the image with the sound, and if there is such a clear relationship in the initial work, it is on a parallel basis. Often, then, either the sound or the image itself shows me the possible changes that can be made to a particular realisation. It is quite an intuitive process – sound is governed by completely different rules than image. But on the level of associations or a kind of synesthesia, I notice the mutual influence of image and sound.
“There is no one right pattern by which to create. Wandering paintings do not have a single face, but hundreds of successive, constantly changing faces.”
— Zuzanna Romańska
MS: You are in your fifth year at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts. What direction do you hope for your work to go in from here? Is there another medium which you plan to give more attention to?
ZR: I am currently interested in the issue of multicomposition and fragmented narratives played out in images. I am fascinated by the casket-like nature of such a juxtaposition of different types of storytelling. At the same time, I am increasingly interested in multi-segment paintings, pentaptychs and other types of polyptych, and would like to explore this formal theme further. Recently, I have started to explore objects, larger-scale sculptures and experimental video forms in a new way. I am letting these areas flow in their own way, but at the same time, I plan to channel the objects into a specific series of hybrid representations and develop the video into a poetic narrative.
