"Ex Cathedra"

Maryna Sakowska’s solo exhibition Ex Cathedra explores symbols of power, rebellion, and entanglement in relationships with disciplinary institutions such as schools, the Church, and socio-cultural norms. The artist critically examines these authoritative structures, drawing attention not only to their contemporary forms but also to the historical frameworks that shaped them.

The exhibition unfolds at the intersection of personal biography and local mythology. Sakowska grew up in a prefabricated housing estate in Szczecin at the turn of the millennium. Her narrative also draws on an urban legend according to which the first Black Mass in Poland took place in Szczecin in 1986, at the Bismarck Tower. At the same time, Gothic and black metal subcultures were taking shape – communities of which Sakowska, then a teenager, was a part. Among young people, an interest in occult aesthetics was likewise becoming increasingly widespread.

A recurring motif in the artist’s work is that of fragmented and contradictory worlds and systems of meaning – deceptive structures that maintain an appearance of order while resting upon ritualized violence, and magical thinking concealed behind the façades of institutions that present themselves as rational. In her visual narratives, Sakowska draws inspiration from authors such as Sylvia Federici and René Girard, whose writings examine sacrificial ritual and repression as mechanisms underpinning the formation of modern social order.

Sakowska’s practice moves between painting and spatial object-making, employing a wide range of materials and found objects. Her painting surfaces include school blackboards, denim canvases, and cat scratching posts. The numerous figures that populate her works – representing diverse contexts and aesthetics – appear against backgrounds of faded, shadowy, incomplete, patchwork-like, or incoherent architectural structures that suggest layered hierarchies of power. Non-chronological aesthetics and nested formal compositions serve as critical tools in the artist’s hands, forming the syntax of a visual language that, through a multiplicity of materials and symbols, articulates both reflection upon and an emotional engagement with her cultural heritage.

More