The monographic exhibition of Dorota Mytych is the artist’s first such comprehensive presentation in Poland. A graduate of the Accademia di Belle Arti and the Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, Italy, she has been exhibiting her projects mainly in the United States and Australia. Her works are in collections including those of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Coast City Art Gallery, the Gold Coast, Artbank Melbourne and the Victoria Legal Aid offices in Melbourne.

Mytych probes the social and political status quo, analysing power structures, but also the social base in which they are anchored. She has had limited presence on the Polish art scene, despite the fact that her interest in the evolution of systems of power stems directly from her experience of growing up in Poland under communism. Most of the themes present in this exhibition at MOCAK are rooted in Poland’s history and heritage. The success that the artist has had abroad reveals widespread interest in these themes and demonstrates the artist’s ability to universalise her private experiences.

The title of the exhibition highlights the persistence of intrusive images that can linger, hidden in our subconscious, for years, draining us until they find closure – in the case of Dorota Mytych, implemented in her projects.

The artist works in a variety of media – painting, drawing, video, sculpture, installation and performance – each time selecting the one best able to capture the issue she finds compelling. The exhibition comprises paintings, drawings, spatial works and videos, in which the artist exposes the fragility and transience of systems of power or social constructs by showing the processes of their gradual dissolution and transformation. What these works have in common is that they question socially established narrative.