Martha MULAWA (1973), Incitatus; 2022/2022

Bronze on travertine base; 34 x 30 x 15 cm bronze: 26 x 24 x 15 cm
Edition: 5/8
Signed: Mulawa 5/8

Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Faculty of Industrial Forms. Scholarship holder at Vysoká škola uměleckoprůmyslová v Praze and l'École des beaux-arts de Toulouse. Laureate of many design competitions. A Krakow-based artist, she grew out of her Puławy roots and is in love with the Tatra Mountains. Lately she has been creating mainly sculptures and installations, formerly the author of unique batiks - works of art animated by light. As an initiator and organizer of artistic endeavors, she is eager to share her passion with her audiences, easily engaging more participants and co-creators of such projects as "Inspired by Szukalski," she also participated in two editions of the Mountain of Literature Festival, organized by the Olga Tokarczuk Foundation. She is usually inspired by deeply and multi-levelly felt nature, which can be seen in most of the artist's works. In her art projects she combines sculpture, installations, batik or painting with music, mapping, light and dance. Martha Mulawa's works are also widely appreciated and used in applied art. She has presented her works in more than sixty solo and group exhibitions, including: Mulawa - Mitoraj at the Museum of Magical Realism "Ochorowiczówka" in Wisla. Her works have found their way into private collections at home and abroad.

Martha Mulawa's sculptural work demonstrates the ease with which she perceives material around her for potential works of art, which undoubtedly testifies to the artist's overflowing imagination, sensitive to the forms present in nature, where everything is additionally saturated with flowing beauty, perceived even in the ugliness of wood gnawed by destruction or woodworms. Essentially, most of the objects are a conglomeration of natural forms invented in the environment, supplemented by anthropomorphizing elements, giving the final work a whole new meaning.

Incitatus has its initial status as a fragment of a rough-textured trunk of a decayed tree, to which the artist, following the form created by nature, has added fragmentary nostrils and an eye, creating a clear reference to a showy solid often used in iconography, such as a horse's head. The whole can be interpreted, for example, as the head of an apocalyptic animal, which through its jittery, almost open-work texture suggests its origin in the supernatural world.