Anna Rutkowska (B. 1996), Scrap Metal Breakdown, 2020

Egg tempera on linen canvas, 60 x 90 cm; signed: 'EMERGENCY OF GOLD ANNA RUTKOWSKA 2020'.

Anna Rutkowska | She is an artist of the new generation who has already made her presence strongly known, especially through her intense performances, although in her artistic practice she is also involved in painting, creating installations, photography and video. In her works, she very often uses her own body as a medium, which is not only a formal medium, but also a conceptual and meaningful medium, through which she addresses issues such as sexuality, physiology, and power relations. In the finals of Hestia's Artistic Journey competition, she presented a work titled Heavyweight, which consisted of Polaroids of the performance and the gelatin-soaked clothes used in that performance, which belonged to professors at the Academy of Fine Arts. Rutkowska comments on her work as follows: "I use my body as a tool, undertaking a confrontation with pressure and overwhelm (...) I symbolically negotiate with trauma, suffering and power." The work addresses the artist's personal experience with institutionalized, gender-dependent violence, with sexist behavior within an environment that itself, on the surface, appears extremely tolerant and progressive. A large and important area of Rutkowska's work is also painting. The work on display, titled Breakdown of Scrap, is related to the series Art Outside the Field of Art, which alludes to Pierre Bourdieau's theory of distinction and the key category of the field (le champ) in this theory. The works, however, present a connection to the world of farming: the result of an exploration outside the art community - literally outside the field of art. The artist describes the series (consisting of both paintings and collages): "the works created so far depict the various stages of human cultivation by traditional methods: sowing, hoeing, weeding, germinating, planting, fertilizing, growing. When modern technologies fail, the environment will force civilization to return to traditional, less toxic and harmful methods of cultivating life. The work addresses the dangers of overexploitation of the environment, allegorically depicting the Earth being exploited by man and subjected to a series of violent treatments." The entire series is associated with Sigridur Hagalin Bjornsdottir's famous novel The Island. Anna Rutkowska is a graduate of the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (2020) in the studio of Jaroslaw Modzelewski with a specialization in Visual Structures in the Studio of Dr. Jan Mioduszewski. She comes from an artistic family, and as she says: "with her multi-generational baggage of heavy experiences she struggles through paintings, performances, installations, objects and martial arts." Finalist of Hestia's Artistic Journey competition (2020), scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2019/2020), scholarship holder of the Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2016-2020.