Maja Borowicz is an artist passionate about industrial design and futuristic architecture. She creates a realistic and surreal images for paintings, movies and illustrations. World of Maja Borowicz with one hand firmly rooted in reality while opening the event exceeding experience. In this way, the paintings are saturated with existential symbolism of magical realism involving the innermost and the most profound experiences of human existence.
Artist Statement:
My paintings are a story about how a certain important part of human history determined the thoughts and experiences of one person.
I came into the world in a country that was severely damaged during the Second World War. In a city that was wiped off the face of the earth a few decades ago and was never to be reborn. I come from a generation whose ancestors unconsciously transferred traumas and painful experiences onto them. As a child, I did not know any family who wasn't affected by the personal tragedy of war. My grandparents experienced a nightmare of violence and death, the loss of many of their loved ones, the loss of assets built up over generations. Their world had never been consistent, lasting or predictable. They passed this baggage on to future generations in the hope that nothing so horrible would ever happen again. However, successive generations came to live in the communist shackles of the Soviet forces, under governments based on terror and surveillance. The regime effectively eliminated any development of the individual, limited individuality, freedom of speech, the possibility to leave the country. The world behind the Iron Curtain was hermetic, filled with fear. This reality has left its mark on people's minds, affecting their worldview. Over the years, powerlessness, disagreements and frustration destroyed my parents' generation.
That's when I was born. From my ancestors I inherited tragic experiences, and from fate - chronic illness and talent. The disease destroyed my body from early childhood. The reality of the difficult times I lived in prevented me from getting the correct diagnosis. I suffered, relying on the limited knowledge of doctors, the treatments they recommended which not only had no effect, but were an additional source of pain, depriving me of hope. Escaping into the imagination became a means of protection. Pencil and paper became the tools that made the world bearable.
However, the path to the painting I do now was long and winding. It took me almost 30 years. It started with fighting the system, the experience of Poland recovering freedom, understanding, self-awareness and acceptance of individuality in 1989. The bumpy road I traveled led through years of personal struggle for survival. Imagination gave me pictures that contained everything that I was, what I experienced, what I was and am a witness of. All of this is alive and visible in my paintings. The heroes are almost always made up of pieces, they break, burst, shatter, they have mechanical parts, which is an allegory of my personal struggles. They grow out of the memory of past generations, they are an echo of deep emotions.
The world that I show is never consistent, lasting or predictable. It is a world of chaos, where the heroes are struggling with the changing reality, sometimes brushing up against the hopelessness of fate. The paintings that I create tell the story of a certain, real society, the stories of people... My experiences are just one example. After all, there are places in the world under other governments, surrounded by wars, where only love and hope help people survive. .
I include all these complicated feelings, experiences and thoughts in my paintings. Because of the difficult message and demanding content, I enclose them in the realistic shapes of oil painting. My work is a tribute to our experience and sacrifices. Thanks to them, we have a chance to be stronger, more sensitive, we learn how to be better people.
