The Dancing Goddess

Monika Waraxa is conscious of her artistic choices and knows how to place them in various intellectual and spiritual contexts. Her paintings, which are extended by photo-video collages and three-dimensional objects, form a colorful series that becomes a journey, as she herself calls it, that is a network of multiverses. Here, we experience colorful splashes and dancing brushstrokes, consisting of characters and situations that show the complexity of many existential dimensions (multiverses) that are close to the artist, but which encourage us to travel and experience, and to ask questions about our place in reality, about the meaning of our choices, about ourselves and the world that not so much surrounds us, but of which we are a part.

The aura surrounding these images is the artist’s extraordinary and dynamic personality. This aura prompts us to reflect on matrilineality and, at the same time, on the moment when the function of art was linked to ritual, when it was a ceremony that had the power to change reality, like the ritual of painting on sand or dances and gestures associated with rites of passage, like ancient prehistoric figurines filled with mystery. The objects produced were once meant to connect us with the mysterious force that guides us and the reality to which we belong, to familiarize us with and reconcile us to something greater and incomprehensible to us—nature, supernatural forces, destiny, transience, death. Monika Waraxa’s paintings and objects seem to lead us into the same areas. This is why the confrontation between these poignant images and color combinations and their titles is so extraordinary, allowing us to make various associations, as in the surrealists’ game – a game that can be deadly serious.

The faces and smiles of the female figures emerging from these paintings remind us of the complexity of “becoming a woman,” to paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir; of the fact that the social entanglements of a woman from Western culture are far removed from the matrilineal elements found in archaic cultures. Therefore, one of the inspirations here is the extraordinary philosophy of Karen Barad, who, like a mythical female figure, mixes things up and introduces connections where there were previously only divisions, namely by combining the perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy with theoretical physics, the perspective of the humanities with strictly experimental science, showing that our universe is a combination of countless dimensions, just as we ourselves are a multiplicity of threads, where the warp and weft turn out to be of different colors, different origins, and yet together they form a single fabric. Nevertheless, we constantly try to unravel it, acting like the mythical Penelope. However, it is this Penelope who waits for Odysseus. However, this is Odysysseus, as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote in Dialectic of Enlightenment, who turns out to be the embodiment of instrumental reason, leading to an attempt to put everything into the framework of clear comprehensibility and tangible benefits, which are supposed to result from our every gesture. Penelope therefore tears her fabric in a gesture as disturbing as the actions of her husband Odysseus. Monika Waraxa’s images go against this way of thinking, seeming to lift us slightly above the surface we tread on, allowing us to see what is invisible. Here, we escape instrumental reason and do not unravel the fabric composed of the multitude of paradoxes from which our lives are woven.

As I wrote, in this constellation, the paintings are extended by objects created by the artist, whose meaning is best captured, in my opinion, by Jolanta Brach-Czaina, who reflects on the meaning of the object as such: “Objects do not exist entirely objectively, because they do not have the same value for every mind. Thanks to the fact that they are not the same for everyone, it is possible for beings to talk, exchange ideas, and communicate. We choose some from a handful of meanings“[1]; and further: ”Although it is a fragment of being, which only our attention ultimately makes an object, its foundation in attention is the answer we give to the call directed at us” [2]. Monika Waraxa’s objects call out, engage us, and provide a handful of meanings from which we choose those that resonate with us and with who we are. These objects, fragments of existence, seem personal, but at the same time they can become a talisman for everyone, and they also correspond with the video and the wonderful creation that is Alina, a tribute to the extraordinary material beings created by Szapocznikow.

In Monika Waraxa’s art, in its multifaceted nature, both in painting and in objects, we can see the Nietzschean intertwining of Apollo and Dionysus, the intertwining of the forces of order and ecstasy, an intertwining that is both a struggle and a loving embrace. Nevertheless, what is important is that it is the goddess who is most present here, not the gods. Namely, following in the footsteps of Zbigniew Herbert and his poem To Athena, we can conclude that it is her we ultimately find in the experience of these images, for “we run through the gates of light/ from brightness into blindness.” But the Athena we find here is not a bronze goddess disguised as a man, as in Homer’s story, but a lightly dancing being who, contrary to our common perceptions, restores matrilineal balance by proudly displaying her femininity; encouraging us to face the world, to give it new meanings and, ultimately, to tear

“the scales from our eyes

let them see.”

[1] J. Brach-Czaina, Szczeliny istnienia [Cracks of Existence], Wydawnictwo eFKa, Krakow 1998, p. 13.
[2] Ibid., p. 12.

Monika Murawska, exhibition text: Traces of the Goddess in the Web of Multiversum at the Alina Foundation

Coordination: Dorota van Vugt, Antonina Gugała
Graphic design: Paulina Derecka
Exhibition setup: Amadeusz Pucek

This exhibition presents works that are part of a doctoral thesis of the same title, conducted at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Supervisor: Dr. hab. Marcin Chomicki, University Professor

Exhibition Opening: January 16, 2026, at 6 PM
Exhibition Dates: 16.01-15.02.2026
Opening Hours: Wed – Sun: 12–6 PM
Alina Foundation 31/33 Brzozowa St., Apt. 1, Warsaw