The women in Beata Ewa Białecka’s paintings resemble statuary goddesses or orants engrossed in prayer, gazing into the abyss of another reality. Filled with absolute calmness, inner confidence and power, they emanate the strength and sensuality of the primary female representations and exotic female goddesses. They have more in common with the Great Mother, the savage Woman – Earth than with the ethereal, subtle and girlish beauty of the traditional representations of Mary. Goddesses and idols, holy ones and orants – carnal in their opulent bodies have an air of old personifications of female energies or shamanesses aware of their power, somewhat demonic and domineering. But not cruel. Donors of life, Mistresses of death, priestesses (it is not coincidence that culture has deprived women of this important religious function and co-related authority), spiritual mothers and guides, aware of their creative power and their power to give birth display their bodies, frequently fully or partially naked, but in neither coquettish nor seductive poses, nor attracting erotic looks. Such is the mature womanhood, emanating even from girls; such is feminine fullness and pride. Beata Ewa Białecka grants a universal meaning, disclosing the female element and the psychological aspect to the created images. It reaches the sources of womanhood. Regeneration. Healing. Caring. Peace. Earthliness. Tangibility. Corporeality. Withering.

The latest paintings of Beata Ewa Białecka are supplemented with embroidery, a gesture recalling a traditional feminine craft, that also refers to a sacral art - an important aspect in the context of the iconographic threads tackled by the artist. The message of the works is enhanced by references to female creativity introduced through the images of the “female hand-made crafts”. Embroidered and beaded corsets and embroidered floral motifs are the recognizable signs of decorative art, mastered for ages by nameless artists. The red roses chosen by Beata Ewa Białecka as the symbol of female stigma in the representation of the female Saviour, open up the vast symbolism of this flower but primarily enhance the iconoclastic reading of the image and Christian historiography, though not without a speck of humour. We are submerged in the female history of salvation, in the long forgotten matrilineal branch of humankind, in the excluded female part of the myth of suffering and redemption.

The female idols of Beata Ewa Białecka are often coupled, as if reflected or strengthened; sometimes in the circle of their female family, like in the motif of “The Virgin and Child with St. Anne”, which is frequently taken up by the artist. They are signs of sisterhood, matrilineal bonds, the genealogy of the body. Female solidarity and common experience, which our culture seems to be forgetting, erasing female houses from family stories, doomed to oblivion by bereaving them of surnames, belonging and heritage, cutting off the predecessors of kin. By depriving the world of female bonds, the ruling of the patriarchal part is enhanced: we not only live in a world organized according to the male image but also in the male history and the male vision of religiosity. There is one more aspect of Beata’s art that I would like emphasize – its orientation to an ideal does not clench fists or teeth. Instead, it is lined with a subtle humour, distance and subversity. It does not shed blood until the final victory. But asks wise questions. Paints wise pictures. Female icons.

I value Beata Białecka’s painting highly. It bravely undertakes a discussion with the one-sided picture of the world and demands the forgotten, female part. However this is not just an ideological stance. The “demanding” bears feminine notions, this specific kind of activism; it is happening within the space of a painting (looking backwards at art history, also full of the works and deeds of male painters), with high respect to its values, quality, material, technique, motifs and past. This attitude in art is also infrequent.

I am Emmanuelle Rose, the daughter of Mary of Nazareth, the granddaughter of Anna. I have bleeding wounds on my hands and feet. They are stigmas – my mother says so. I still don’t know why they are here and where they are from. But I will surely find out. This could be the beginning of any of the female stories… And it is exactly what Beata Ewa Białecka’s painting is recounting.
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