May 22 – June 26
It would be difficult to find a literary phrase more fitting for what Kinga Burek has portrayed in her paintings from 2025–2026 than the title of this exhibition, borrowed from an essay by Luce Irigaray.
On 6 February 2025, Kinga’s mother passed away—a biochemist by profession and, after retiring on disability pension, a social activist. She suffered from bipolar disorder, a condition with which the artist herself also lives. Death severed the profound bond between the two women.
In processing her mother’s death, Burek paints the contents of a package filled with absurd and cheaply made objects purchased by her mother on Temu—objects through which, by way of her mother’s compulsive shopping, the artist is able to internalize her mother within herself “as living.” Among these objects are a citrus peeler, a double-chin massager, a curtain clip, bedsheet fasteners, and nail stickers.
A second group of compositions depicts scenes directly connected to death and mourning: the mother laid out on the bier and in the coffin, as well as elements of the clothing in which she was buried—a white silk haori and blue high heels.
The theme of death continues in the “black” landscapes and in twin-like representations of the artist together with her mother, in which the motif of the double may be interpreted as a psychoanalytic image of repressed fear of death. The central figure is marked by the artist’s characteristic physiognomic features: a spiral storm of hair and large teeth. These self-portraits appear as though they had been drawn with a rough, splintered stick.
In contrast, the objects from the Temu package are painted with greater tenderness and softness—as images of the Mother.
Kinga Burek’s work is intensely expressive while at the same time deeply discursive, drawing from diverse sources of humanistic and philosophical reflection.
