The horizon offers no promise of beginnings or endings. Clouds, heavy with rain yet to fall, hang low over the coast. Night settles as she stands at the edge of the shore, her feet slowly sinking into the shifting sand. The wind bites at her skin, and the taste of salt lingers on her lips as she watches the sea breathe in and out.
A wave rises, its crest briefly shrouded in the dim light of the moon, then falls. Another follows in its wake. This swell, she thinks, may have been born of a distant storm, far beyond sight, in the vast and indifferent ocean. Or perhaps it was here that it began—deep within her, in a place she cannot quite name.
The sea sways with a steady, hypnotic rhythm, its roar blending with her sorrow. How many times, she wonders, has her life been shaped by relentless forces beyond her control? A woman’s existence, carried by the tides, swept away by currents both near and impossibly distant.
Creeping like shadows in the night, long-buried words of contempt and bitter remnants of the past rise to the surface. With them, her storm gathers strength, poised to splinter her world into countless shards. Her heart rumbles like thunder, and her thoughts cut as sharply as shattered glass.
The water brushes against her feet as whispers emerge with the swell. Faint at first, then growing louder, she hears the voices of women with stories to tell. Their songs speak of battles fought, fleeting victories, and storms weathered. Traveling across oceans, they leave fragments of hope along the shores.
Her eyes trace the faint, nearly imperceptible thread of the horizon. She pictures women in distant lands, standing just like her, their feet sinking into the sand, their bodies bracing against the wind. Beneath the weight of the heavy clouds, she is not truly alone—not anymore. She senses their presence in every wave, in the ceaseless ebb and flow of the swell that refuses to fade.
The endless rhythm of the sea carries her thoughts, its dance a shield, protecting the depths from the chaos beyond. Waves, she ponders, are like sisters across time, each one pushing the next forward. In a perpetual cycle of breaking and release, they return again and again, their collective strength reshaping contours once deemed immutable.
Suddenly, the darkness of the night no longer feels absolute. From the tumult of the swell—boundless, untamable, an echo of her storm—she begins to draw strength and protection. It is in that moment she understands: she is the ocean, the wave, the force that endures, the shield.
—Liberty Adrien
Participating artists:
Teresa Gierzyńska, Ksenia Gryckiewicz, Julia Kowalska, Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, Wiktoria
at Gunia Nowik Gallery, Warsaw
until February 1, 2024
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