The Unbearable Lightness / Simulacrum – 2024, 2025

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The works of Iwona Ligęza balance on the threshold between wakefulness and dream, offering images that not only imitate reality but fracture it, breaking it down into fragments filled with ambiguity and unease. The inspiration for this exhibition is the concept of the simulacrum — an imitation that ceases to be merely a reflection of reality and instead becomes an autonomous entity, capable of creating its own seductive narratives.

Ligęza, like a demiurge, manipulates form with sophistication, creating a subtle intellectual game. Her women — masks, hybrids, specters — seem to say more through their silence than they ever could through the loudest screams. In this world, everything is simultaneously revealed and concealed: gestures are theatrical, yet their meaning eludes simple interpretation; colors dazzle, but also overwhelm, leaving the viewer anything but indifferent.

The titular Simulacrum is also a story about a fascination with imitation. Ligęza does not attempt to reproduce reality; rather, she constructs alternative worlds — parallel realms filled with signs whose key we may never fully possess. In this way, her paintings function like mirrors that, instead of reflecting, tilt perspective itself, forcing us to confront the question: what is real, and what merely pretends to be truth?

Perhaps it is precisely within this perpetual uncertainty — within this endless play of appearances — that the most convincing form of truth resides.

— Anna Madejeska, curator of Żywa Galeria Stalowa 52