Interview: Ewelina Cichocka
Luca Curci talks with Ewelina Cichocka during RITUALS, first appointment of ANIMA MUNDI 2024, at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello.

Ewelina Cichocka, born in Włocławek, Poland in 1984. In 2008, she graduated from the Poznań Academy of Fine Arts, majoring in interior architecture and design, and in 2012, graduating from the Faculty of Painting. She has been working for years designing interiors, scenography, and furniture. She runs her own creative studio where, together with her team, she creates advertising creations, photos, and films. However, painting is closest to her among many creative activities. The artist is currently developing a new original painting project – Tectonics. Her works are abstract, relief compositions, which were greatly inspired by the materials used in them – cardboard, paper, and their properties. Her paintings change the face of something as common, and unnoticeable as cardboard, and thanks to the composition of the image, it becomes a discovery and reveals itself in a unique form. This is the art of recycling and recycling in art. It is a metaphor for the transition from something so trivial, ordinary, and unnoticeable into something that becomes a discovery, something extraordinary and admired. It is easy to find inspiration from architecture, urban space, and bionics in the works.

Luca Curci – How did you get to your current artistic practice?
Ewelina Cichocka –

Initially, I studied Interior architecture and design at the Poznań Academy of Fine Arts, but during these studies I discovered my huge passion for painting. At the beginning, my paintings were inspired by architectural landscapes and people in it. When I graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, my main interest was oil painting, mainly geometric abstraction. However, my search for my own technique and inspirations from bionics and architecture, which I also studied, led me to a place in my work that synthesized the idea of tectonics and a new technique of using cardboard in a painting.

LC – Do you have any habits or rituals while you work?
EC – The most important thing for me is preparation to create new paintings. Searching for inspiration is usually the first stage for me and it is my ritual. I love having time to look for… new structures, materials, playing with light and shadow. The most fascinating thing is that I find these inspirations in many places and situations, such as a concert and its lights on a stage, shopping in a supermarket and finding inspiration in packaging structures, visiting new places and finding structures in nature or in architecture. Opening my head and looking for inspiration is my ritual. Apart from that, I don’t have many special habits, but music always accompanies me when I create, and the light in which I create is also important to me – it allows me to discover new perspectives.

LC – Among the several techniques you use, which one do you prefer to practice and which are most compelling for you?
EC – In the current project, I use my own technique, which is based on the search for the properties and possibilities offered by cardboard and paper. I love looking for new possibilities and ideas for using this material in my works, it’s constant exploration and fun, looking for a way to transform ordinary cardboard into unique compositions. That’s why it’s currently my favorite technique for building relief spaces in my cardboard works. Structures in my works are created just as stories are created… they have their subsequent stages and their consequences. Each subsequent cardboard element is a continuation or consequence of the next one, it is like telling a long story. This fascinates me and is extremely developing.

LC – What do you think about art on social media? Are they turning into the new showcases of contemporary art?
EC – Yes, in many moments art on social media begins to become available to a larger group of recipients, which makes it become an important element of everyday life. It becomes closer.to a larger audience.
However, I am of the opinion that the reception of art in galleries or other places, which gives the opportunity to experience it with many senses, live, is something that art in social media will never replace or reproduce.

Image courtesy of Ewelina Cichocka

Image courtesy of Ewelina Cichocka

Image courtesy of Ewelina Cichocka

LC – What issues do you intend to deal with in the future?
EC – I intend to continue my search for the possibilities offered by cardboard, but I am also interested in other materials whose recycling and processing can change their appearance within the picture.

LC – In which way is the artwork presented in our exhibition connected with the exhibition’s theme?
EC – My paintings are a metaphor for the transition from something common and unnoticeable into something unique… just like a modern man, he often feels unimportant, and unnoticed, and his own development, work and rituals can turn him into something extraordinary while remaining the same himself. The material I use in my paintings used to be an extraordinary invention and an innovative discovery, today it is extremely popular for modern people, ordinary, even unnoticeable because it is so common. I am restoring to it the value that it has lost in human perception over the years. Cardboard undergoes a metamorphosis during one of its “lifetimes”, just like a human does.

LC – Can you explain something about the artworks you have in our exhibition?
EC – My works change the face of something as common, and unnoticeable as cardboard, and thanks to the composition of the image, it becomes a discovery and reveals itself in a unique form. This is the art of recycling and recycling in art. It is a metaphor for the transition from something so trivial, ordinary, and unnoticeable into something that becomes a discovery, something extraordinary and admired. It is easy to find inspiration from architecture, urban space, and bionics in the works.