Paulina Olowska

Centring female perspectives and narratives, Olowska’s presentation will develop her explorations into Slavic folklore, mythology, and the collective capabilities of, and our intrinsic connection to, nature.

Titled after Olowska’s eponymous video installation, first included in the artist’s 2022 exhibition at Kistefos Museum in Norway, Squelchy Garden Mules and Mamunas reimagines Slavic mythological deities and demons in new modernist lights. The Mamuna, literally translated from Polish as strangewife, is a female swamp demon closely associated with rivers, streams, and thickets. Historically characterised as menacing, Olowska portrays her Mamunas as earthly androgynous nymphs, more magical than malicious.

Throughout the upper two galleries of the exhibition, Mamunas peer out from a video installation nestled within five woodland hollows. Suggestive of Black Forest cuckoo clocks, carved woodland creatures—including bears, foxes, owls, squirrels, and deer—populate each frame. Kadenówka Bouquet (2023), the only framed painting in the exhibition, is based on an image taken at the Kadenówka in Rabka, home to Artist House Kadenowka Foundation, established by Olowska in 2019. Designed in 1932 by Adam Kaden, Kadenówka has been home to a health spa, tailoring school, hospital accommodation, and is now run by Olowska as an artistic and cultural retreat, hosting meetings, lectures, exhibitions, and performances on the subject of sacred knowledge.

Further complicating notions of interior and exterior, two ornate chandeliers will feature in the show. Working in collaboration with the artist Jessica Segall as a continuation of Segall’s Nom Nom Ohm series, Olowska’s chandeliers uncover the wisdom and the intelligence of the forest. Bedecked with ceramic and handblown glass mushrooms, pinecones, fruits, vegetables, and potatoes, the chandeliers reproduce the reciprocal systems and inter-species networks of communication that structure woods and forests. Research on fungi suggests they can generate electrical signals through their mycelial webs: Olowska symbolically harnesses this energy to charge her chandeliers and illuminate the exhibition.

In the lower ground floor gallery, Olowska will stage puppets wearing the costumes from her Kistefos performance. The puppets take equal inspiration from Ukrainian Motanka—knotted guardian dolls, made without needle or scissors—and the Polish spring ritual Topienie Marzanny, during which straw Marzanna dolls representing death, winter, and disease, are drowned in the river. Arranged in compositional motifs mirroring those found in the artist’s paintings for the exhibition, and animated by a richly layered woodland soundscape, the handmade mannequins appear corporeal in their softer lighting. The artist’s interest in animism—the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence—informs the exhibition throughout.

Concurrent with her presentation at Pace, Olowska will show new and old work for her exhibition, Visual Persuasion, at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, opening November 2. At The Serravles Foundation, Porto, the artist’s iconic performance, The Alphabet, will be staged on November 5 as part of their live programme.

Pace Gallery and Paulina Olowska would like to thank the LET IT GO team: Sayuri Chetti; Amy Corall; Yasmin el Yassini; Rick Geene; Lou Renard, and Kamil Sznajder. Jessica Segall collaborated with Olowska on the chandeliers, with additional support from Christoph Krane. Photographs by Arthur Elgort, Kacper Kasprzyk, and Branislav Šimončík were the source for paintings in the exhibition. Additional thanks to William Flatmo, Laura Grudniewska, Dorota Kidziak, Monika Kucel, Aleksandra Lewandowska, Viktoriia Semenska, Kate Smith-Raabe, Christen Sveeas and the HAHNEL BUJALSKI SPÓŁKA team for all their help with Squelchy Garden Mules and Mamunas.