Is a woman a dessert? Is the body an object? Can ordinariness be embroidered and desire covered with icing? These questions are answered, ironically, affectionately and without making any allowances, by three artists whose work comes together in one space: Karolina Konopka, Alicja Kozłowska and Natalia LL. In their works, full of reflections on femininity, consumption and community, they treat the body, food and the object not only as a subject but also as tools for storytelling.
Karolina Konopka creates a bitter-sweet world balancing between pleasure and anxiety, revealing the hidden social mechanisms that shape our approach to the body, food and consumption. Her work is not only pleasing to the eyes, but also makes us reflect on how the rituals of food, abundance and celebration affect our psyche. Although at first glance her work – encompassing painting, sculpture, video and text – is colourful, glittering and appetising, beneath the sugary surface lies a critique of contemporary social rituals such as celebrations and communal and solitary meals. The cakes that become the focal point of her works are not just aesthetic objects, but symbolise abundance, ritual, compulsion and social expectations. The confectionery giants she creates are a combination of reflections on mass culture, traditions and contemporary expectations that accompany throughout our lives. Konopka explores how the everyday acts of eating, although seemingly trivial, are full of hidden meanings and emotions.
Another artist presenting her work at the exhibition is Alicja Kozłowska. In the Embroidered Ordinariness project, she transforms everyday objects – packets of crisps, cans of cola or fruit – into embroidered sculptures, combining traditional craftsmanship with a pop-art aesthetic. Her works, at first glance reminiscent of mass-produced articles, reveal their uniqueness upon closer inspection. Using felt, fabrics and other materials, the artist gives these objects a new status, turning them into works of art that provoke reflection on consumerism, overproduction and the social role of things in our lives.
In her work, Kozłowska combines art with performances in public space. Through actions in grocery shops, where she ‘abandons’ her works among other products, she forces the viewer to stop and rethink automatic, consumerist rituals. Like Andy Warhol, the artist takes mass objects to a pedestal, but does so in a more personal and disturbing way, introducing elements of irony and criticism of contemporary society into her work.
The Appetites exhibition could not do without reference to Natalia LL’s work Sztuka konsumpcyjna (Consumption Art), which combines eroticism and consumption to create an uncompromising reflection on the body, desire and the social mechanisms that shape our desires. In one of the most important video works of the 1970s, a model erotically eats a banana, presenting eating as an intimate act that becomes as desirable as the sexual act.
In the context of the exhibition Appetites, Natalia LL’s work fits in with the themes of the body and desire that also run through the work of Karolina Konopka and Alicja Kozłowska. Her film opens up a space for ambiguous interpretations, in which consumption becomes a medium for reflecting on gender roles, social expectations and individual desires, which are still strongly rooted in consumer culture.
This is an exhibition about pleasure and excess. About the gestures we repeat every day – eating, buying, looking – and how much meaning can be hidden in them. On the one hand, there is room for laughter, criticism and playfulness of form, on the other, reflection on the limits of pleasure and desire. In Appetites, nothing is as it seems. Familiar gestures, such as eating, buying, looking, become moments of disquiet, ironically distorted, provoking a change of perspective. The works of Konopka, Kozłowska and Natalia LL, although so different, are united by a common search for the boundaries between pleasure and compulsion, freedom and oppression, sensuality and everyday life.
exibition curator – Karolina Rybka
Natalia LL (born 1937 in Żywiec, died 2022 in Wrocław) was an outstanding interdisciplinary artist, a key figure in the Polish neo-avant-garde, whose work is categorised as conceptualism, body art and photo art. In 1963, she graduated from the State Higher School of Visual Arts in Wrocław under Professor Stanisław Dawski, and a year later she joined the Association of Polish Art Photographers. Between 1970 and 1981, together with Andrzej Lachowicz, Zbigniew Dłubak and Antoni Dzieduszycki, she co-founded the PERMAFO gallery, whose exhibition and publishing activities contributed significantly to the development of the avant-garde in Poland. She has also been involved in the organisation of the International Triennial of Drawing as commissioner and vice-president. From 1975, she became actively involved in the international feminist art movement, which resulted in her participation in numerous symposia and exhibitions, and in 1977, she was awarded the prestigious Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship in New York. From 2004 to 2013, she shared her experience as a senior lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. Her extensive oeuvre has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Silver Medal for “Merit to Culture Gloria Artis” (2007), the Stanisław Wyspiański Award (2007), and the “Gloria Artis Award” (2007), Katarzyna Kobro Award (2013), and Rosa Schapire Art Prize (2018). In her artistic practice, she has freely used painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video, performance and drawing.
Karolina Konopka – graduate of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice (2020). Scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2019). She works in the fields of: video, painting, sculpture and installation. She is interested in confectionery, delicatessen art, the issue of mass culture, consumerism, discarded food as well as that on the plate, rites, traditions and rituals rooted in Polish culture. She searches the Internet, used goods shops, and dumpsters, and catalogues the things she finds there.
Author of individual exhibitions, among them. Do ostatniej łzy (To the Last Tear, Galeria Bielska BWA, Bielsko-Biała, 2025), Gyburstag (CSW Kronika, Bytom, 2022), Czekoladopodobne i tłusta masa (Chocolate-like and Fatty Mass, Eskaem, Gdańsk, 2022), Tortologia (Cake-o-logy, BWA Katowice, 2020), Niższy biszkopt (Lower Sponge Cake, Dobro Gallery, Olsztyn, 2020). Participant of group exhibitions, festivals and projects, such as Opowiem wam o sobie/o nas (I Will Tell You About Myself/Ourselves, National Museum in Gdańsk, 2025), Jedzenie w sztuce (Food in Art, MOCAK, Kraków, 2024), Refugees Welcome (MSN, Warszawa, 2023), Niepokój przychodzi o zmierzchu (Anxiety Comes at Dusk, Zachęta – National Art Gallery, Warszawa, 2022).
Alicja Kozłowska – artist and designer from Poland, known for her innovative approach to textile art and embroidery. Her work combines traditional craftsmanship with the modern language of art.
She received her artistic education at the Wojciech Gerson State High School of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where she obtained a diploma in graphic design, and at the School of Form of the SWPS University, majoring in design. A solid theoretical and practical background has become the foundation of her unique style, which freely balances tradition and modernity.
Alicja’s work has been exhibited in prestigious galleries and museums around the world, including The LAM Museum (Lisse, Netherlands), Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum (Bratislava, Slovakia), MOCAK (Krakow, Poland), Gallery1988 (Los Angeles, USA), Unit London (London, England) and Palazzo Velli Expo (Valtopina, Italy).
In 2021, her work was honoured at the international Hand & Lock Prize for Embroidery competition, and the following year she was awarded the Scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage for outstanding artistic achievement. In 2024, she was selected to represent Poland in the prestigious Homo Faber Fellowship programme organised by the Michelangelo Foundation.
Her work has been widely covered in international media, including Designboom, Colossal, Textileartist, Elle Decoration and many others.
Her passion is broadly defined textile art and handicrafts. Drawing inspiration from the everyday, she aims to redefine and elevate textile art and embroidery to a new level, transforming traditional techniques into modern, meaningful works that encourage reflection and open up spaces for dialogue.
04.12.2025 – 15.02.2025
20 Gdańska St.
