Słowak builds a private mythology and casts herself in the lead. The balloon is a child's prop, but nothing here is innocent, and the self-portrait carries the occult, the historical and the bodily all at once. She is one of the boldest painters of her generation, as at ease with tenderness as with threat.
The painter
Agata Słowak (born 1994) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and won a Polityka Passport, one of Poland's most watched art prizes, in 2022. She builds a private mythology around the body, the occult and the historical, as at ease with tenderness as with threat. She has shown with the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw, Fortnight Institute in New York and BLUM in Tokyo and Los Angeles.