Kati Dobrogo (b. 1989), Touch, 2026

Kati Dobrogo is originally from Milanówek and currently lives and works in Warsaw’s Żoliborz district. She graduated with a degree in textile print design from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź in 2014 and in graphic arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk in 2016. She works primarily in oil and watercolor painting. She draws inspiration from people—especially women—and how they are perceived, as well as how they see and feel about themselves. She is fascinated by physicality, sensuality, eroticism, and intimacy. In her paintings, she seeks blissful peace, courage, and tenderness—especially in places where shame has been present for years. Almost from the very beginning of her artistic career, the main motif in her work has been the female body, and especially the vagina, which embodies the essence of femininity. She often hears that this word sounds “too medical,” but for her, it carries immense power, naturalness, and truth. In her art, she strives to highlight the beauty and diversity of the female body, while also encouraging women to accept themselves. She hopes that her paintings will help demystify the vagina, which remains a taboo subject. A second, equally important theme is the cyclical nature of a woman’s life. Menstruation, which forces one to pause and look inward, inspired the series titled “I’m Bleeding.” Her paintings are not literal. Saturated colors—often vivid—along with exaggerated compositions and large formats, at first glance make the subject seem unreal, only to reveal and emphasize its significance a moment later. Her latest paintings serve as a form of therapy for the artist. In her physical self-portraits, she explores and processes her relationship with her own body, its changeability, and its imperfection. Her goal is to support femininity in its broadest sense, to demystify the taboos surrounding the female body, to break the silence, and to create a space where this femininity can be celebrated without shame and without restrictions.