Jadwiga Sawicka: Attracts and Repels

I met Jadwiga Sawicka in Przemyśl in March 2004. I travelled to her home city to discuss the production of an exhibition at Atlas Sztuki. We met outside Secondary School No. 1 in Przemyśl, where Jadwiga Sawicka teaches English. She received me kindly. During a walk through old Przemyśl, the artist expressed her views with restraint; in subsequent conversations and meetings, too, she remained charmingly and hermetically discreet in everything concerning her private life, including her art.

During my most recent visit to Przemyśl in November 2004, I visited the artist at her home on the River San—a bastion protecting her and her work. I had the impression that everything there was subordinated to the guiding idea behind the existence of both the house and its resident: creation. The result of the artist’s work at Atlas Sztuki is undoubtedly worth seeing.

Are we good viewers of Jadwiga Sawicka’s work? The authors of the texts published in this catalogue—Paweł Sosnowski and Tomasz Załuski—are certainly enthusiasts. I warmly encourage you to read both essays, written from different perspectives. I also recommend Krzysztof Cichoń’s conversation with the artist. She rarely gives unequivocal answers. It is worth remembering her words: ‘…I speak, I do not speak, and when I speak, it may not be true’.

During my meetings with Jadwiga Sawicka, I had the impression that, with a smile and a touch of contrariness, she was quietly humming If You Don’t Know Me by Now from Simply Red’s repertoire. She regards completing a work, installation or exhibition as reaching merely a particular stage from which the road leads towards further explorations.

I shall continue to observe them with interest, even though the Simply Red song contains the words ‘You will never never never know me’.