MENU OF THE SITE
1.The Earth Museum – site specific exhibition
2. “The Birth of Colors” – about the exhibition
3. The Birth of: {the painting – the text – exhibit descriptions}
„Green”
„Red”
„Violet”
„Yellow”
„Blue”
„Orange”
„Black”
„White”
„Pink”
„Gold”
„Lotus”
The Earth Museum – site specific exhibition
The choice of the Earth Museum as the venue for the exhibition is not coincidental. The genius loci aspect is crucial to me – the context of the place, its energy, and, above all, the exhibits of the Earth Museum, which in this case naturally complement the exhibition. The energy contained in stones, rocks, minerals, and their color palette is directly related to my work. It was, among other things, from minerals that the first colors were extracted.
In collaboration with the museum, I created an appropriate exhibition environment, selecting exhibits directly surrounding the display so that the entirety would mutually intertwine. Eight glass showcases around the installation are arranged by me in the style of a cabinet de curiosité. They contain museum minerals combined with my sketches, sculptures, souvenirs, and artifacts, creating an independent visual narrative that connects with painting. Each main hall painting is coloristically assigned to a showcase with a QR code redirecting to the description of each object. Additionally, along the walls around the paintings, there is a permanent scientific exhibition. This results in a multi-layered site-specific exhibition where each element has its assigned meaning, and there is also synergy between exhibitions building new layers of significance.
Can paintings be described through descriptions of Earth shaping processes, rocks, terrain topography, geological phenomena? I have the impression that these scientific descriptions, along with photographs and charts, metaphorically best capture the nature of my works. Furthermore, reading these descriptions helps me better understand the processes happening within me. This parallelism shows that everything is, in some sense, similar to each other. Birth, shaping, deconstruction, dying – all processes occurring in humans fundamentally resemble the processes occurring in the earth.
“The Birth of Colors” – about the exhibition
If one of the most “sacred” aims that man can set for himself is to acquire as exact and intense an understanding of himself as possible, it seems desirable that each one, scrutinizing his memories with the greatest possible honesty, examine whether he can discover there some sign permitting him to discern the color for him of the very notion of the sacred.
— Michel Leiris, “The Sacred in Everyday Life” (1938)
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Creating a series of paintings for my doctoral thesis, “The Birth of Colors” took place at a crucial moment in my life when transformations were occurring on multiple levels. Simultaneously, I felt that I was shedding my old skin and undergoing a metamorphosis as an artist. I had to radically change my perspective and the way I expressed emotions that couldn’t flow within the confines of the old creative paradigm. I felt the need to work with the body, harness its dynamics, and tap into the vast potential for expression that is my natural resource and could no longer be suppressed. The images often arose from visions and feelings during states of expanded consciousness that immersed me in a trance while painting. This specific, new way of creating led me towards expressive abstraction, where figuration – if present – serves an important symbolic function.
“The Birth of Colors” serves as a record of the intensity of this journey and its mystical dimension. States referred to as holotropic by Stanislav Grof have accompanied me since childhood. At that time and for most of my life, they were incomprehensible, and I suppressed them. At this stage of personal development, I recognized them as a gift and began consciously exploring them without the use of any psychoactive substances.
The concept of holotropic is derived from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “trepein” (moving towards), meaning “moving towards wholeness.”
„Lingam-Yoni” art installation
The central element of the exhibition is a spatial, polysensory installation based on the simultaneous interaction of color and sound. The installation refers to the “Lingam-Yoni” pedestal – the elements of male and female in Vedic philosophy and symbolism. Lingam represents the male initiating energy of the creative processes, while Yoni symbolizes Mother Nature and her power of giving life. My intention was to create an object that combines these elements in the form of a spatial symbol, representing the unity of male and female energy and metaphorically connecting the creative process with the process of healing. The installation provides an opportunity to “immerse oneself” in compositions of colors and music. The object is a place of pause, meditation – surrendering to the flow of energy in the waves of color and sound.
To compose the music, an integral part of the installation, I invited Joanna Halszka Sokołowska. I feel a deep connection with the work of the artist. Our joint hours of immersion in the flows of energy around the installation, in a profound process of co-experiencing the colors and their symbolism, interspersed with meditation, intuitive singing, mutual holding of space, served as the starting point for creating the music.
Paintings
Sometimes, to understand something, I need to paint it. In the “Birth of Colors” series, this connection is even more visible to me. It happened that only after painting an image did I begin to understand its meaning and symbolism.
The painting process – a flash, the vision of an image from which a series of paintings, notes, accompanying poems in the creation of this series, and the act of painting itself, which in this case occurred in a trance – was a form of art therapy – touching emotions, isolating them, and examining them. Through the deep experience, followed by the integration of experiences, I could look at them from a perspective and see what happened. What was painted also becomes an imprint of a specific event. The scene, emotion, or incident will forever remain. It is a process through which I attempt to understand my life, its meaning, and complexity.
I arrange them delicately in cotton gloves on a large table and observe. I match them with shapes, scents, and textures. Some I cannot add yet, as they are still alive. They move. They are not artifacts yet, though already faded. And I feel pain in the solar plexus area when I reach for them with tweezers. Others spill out like a stream after winter when the river banks suddenly burst after a rainy day.
Every emotion
Explodes within me
Or blooms
And then
I gather the fragments
And carefully examine
From every angle
Trying to understand
What exploded
And why I am sitting
among these ruins
still not understanding
why there was this explosion.
Or suddenly, I feel
deep within me
in the stomach or on the sternum
Or everywhere outside
And everywhere inside
A flower cluster blossoms
It’s unknown what.
When it grew
And why on me
And why within me
And why so beautiful
Then it dies
And a new is born
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The Birth of Colors began on August 8, 2022, when the moon traversed its orbit through the Gate of Leo – a compilation of stars associated with the appearance of Sirius in the sky – one of the brightest stars. The summer emergence of Sirius was considered a sacred event marking the beginning of a new year for many ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, Mayans, Sumerians, Babylonians, and the Dogon people’s celestial observations. In Egypt, it also heralded the coming of the Nile flood, a sign of the fertility of Mother Earth.
For me, that day was also the beginning of something new. It was when the first color was born – Pink – the color of absolute love vibrating like shifting sands, a moving mist creating a vortex around the heart chakra. That night, I also witnessed the birth of the Yellow color in the sky, much like the barely visible dawn. In the same way, I felt a vision of the birth of subsequent colors. I felt that it was a narrative unfolding just for me.
That was the beginning. Back then, I didn’t know what, how important, and where I passed through this August gate. On what path I stood and where I had reached. Now, after several months, I panoramically view this segment of my life as a story. I see landscapes, the vast nature that is the cosmos, and me – a microelement of the Universe, so complex in its multidimensional physical, psychic, and spiritual structure, intertwined in relationships, family roots. I see the organicity and corporeality of both myself and nature, the continual self-formation and simultaneous self-destruction. Amidst all this are energies, elements, spirits, human and non-human beings, gods, goddesses, demons, plants, animals, objects, stories, light, and waves – evoking colors and sounds. Infinite richness of forms in constant motion and transformation, in the continuous rotation of celestial bodies. This story is captured in a series of 11 paintings.
The Birth of Colors is a stage in my life and creativity where colors themselves gave meaning, helping to understand the complex process of life, describing states of consciousness and subconsciousness. Their symbolism and archetypal meanings allowed me to immerse deeply into a unified organism and understand that I am a part of it in the incessant process of dying and being born.
I am ready to share this story.
“The Birth of Green”

“The Birth of Green”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x 100x120cm), 2022
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Something pulled me for a long time
Of great or small weight
Some force of gravity
Or perhaps just had to
wait a few months
To fully see
What I saw then.
And now in the February new moon
The Lunar Year of the Tiger
I paint that Deer
whom I met in the summer.
Lying in the scattering on the grass
Looking at the drifting clouds
Listening to the buzzing meadow
In the sun and the shadow of the forest.
Strange sounds reached me
Whistling guttural sounds
They were disturbing
As if someone was struggling
The vegetation resisted
Very dense it was.
And then he suddenly ran out
Rushing towards me
Stopped just in front of me
Could trample a person
Chaos panic in the gaze
Trembling of the whole body
Slender strong limbs
Strength pulsating in the muscles
Fatigue and stop.
In the crown of his antlers
it amused me
A tangle of plants was there
Green shoots
Torn branches
Thickets of grass and herbs
Crowning the creature.
The nature of this encounter
So many emotions all at once
I only remember that later
I began to slowly raise
What are you doing here, Deer?
And then, in a moment, it lasted,
He suddenly bolted
Ran like crazy
Maybe he was scared too.
And he leaped with a great rush
into the same wall of the forest.
I only heard hooves
And the echo hitting the ground.
And his strange whistling.
Sounds unknown before.
Everything lasted so briefly
That now I ask the question
Did it happen at all
Such a meeting with a Deer
Description of objects from the display case (click to enlarge):
“The Birth of Red”

“The Birth of Red”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x 100x120cm), 2022
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The Red high above our heads appeared suddenly.
As if a flower had blossomed, unfolding from a bud, merging with the space around it.
And suddenly, in all its precision of geometry, the depth of light and shadow, fleshy and soft at the same time –
it manifested high above our heads.
It wasn’t in the sky.
It was Beyond.
Everywhere above, yet with its power center like the heart of an artichoke – in the middle.
In the boundless and timeless.
And then, standing in the middle of the room, on the actual ground –
people sitting around me –
I absorbed the energy from that Red with my hand
And transferred it to the heads of those sitting.
One by one.
As if playing an instrument.
And the non-touch of each head produced non-sound.
A wave imperceptible to the human ear.
We were a great instrument emitting colors.
A vast landscape of hues that I set into motion.
Description of objects from the display case (click to enlarge):
“The Birth of Violet”

“The Birth of Violet”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x 100x120cm), 2022
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I can be impossible
and walk through my life and others’ like through an undiscovered cabinet of curiosities under the open sky in a garden with wild animals, without glass shades and without paths.
Once, supposedly, a gardener lived here, who talked to plants, and when he slept, his dreams floated above the surface of the lake, and all living organisms watched them, learning Jung’s theory of symbols. And when he died, the garden continued to grow according to its own concept of freedom and beauty.
I can wander there freely and safely. I can lie down and merge with the buzzing of insects or breathe with the sky. Stop by the plants that stop me and leisurely watch how a spider wraps a caught fly in a cocoon. I can taste fruits without the risk of banishment. I can bury my whole face in the wet, dense flower whose name no one knows and touch every plant, even the poisonous ones. I do it so as not to disturb its structure. And I smell.
With each breath, I connect with the universe and record its history in every cell of my body. Sometimes there is no scent. Or I don’t feel it. Because my senses are too dull to perceive such subtleties,
so I know I will never understand them.
And I will never comprehend infinity.
Even when I lie down at dusk and it seems to me that I am everywhere.
Description of objects from the display case (click to enlarge):
“The Birth of Yellow”

“The Birth of Yellow”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x 100x120cm), 2022
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Before sunset, a large graphite-black cloud appeared on the navy blue canvas of the sky. The full moon was on the right side, subtracted from the left. In the cloud, an eye seemed to open suddenly—a yellow horizontal slit emerged in all its power of contrast and spatial luminosity. Rays, streaks descended towards the river—penetrating through the physical body like a laser and touching my solar plexus directly. It was a laparoscopic surgery without anesthesia. Without opening the skin layers, without blood. Nevertheless, a scream echoing three generations back escaped from my body. Simultaneously, Sirius touched my soul with a blue purifying light. Sirius and the Sun know how to guide through the Lion’s Gate.
Solar Plexus
I lie down, breathe, and try to unravel my solar plexus. It is challenging to understand its complex structure. The plexus is composed of nerve coils characterized by a significant variety of shapes. Some are like crescents, while others are compact spherical forms, with nerve rays resembling the sun emanating from them.
How to recognize what is the solar plexus in its pure form and what is an acquired structure, built from images that have etched themselves, words that cannot be heard, touches that left traces.
They created their separate network and twine around the plexus like vines, depriving it of access to light and spirally tightening on its branches. Some growths are right, others left-handed, so the plexus knot is irregularly overgrown. And into all this, cables from garden lights have grown, which haven’t shone for a long time, but remained there because no one wanted to remove them – they looked so nice on the tree in front of the house. And then it was already too late.
Description of objects from the display case (click to enlarge):
“The Birth of Blue”

“The Birth of Blue”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x 100x120cm), 2023
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Blue was born in nausea and dizziness.
In a chemical sadness and body tremor,
Induced by a bacterium
Equipped with several helical threads.
The extermination of these beings lasted for 10 days – hard capsules, applied to the body in four doses a day, cleansed it, swept away thick organic tangles from under the carpet, which had been stuck there for a long time. They had embedded their threads into the carpet’s structure and didn’t want to let go.
And then, on the 10th morning, I opened my eyes
and saw
That Blue
in the sky.
As if from the afterlife
It was from a different planet of blues
Purer and brighter than I know
I wanted to immerse my eyes in it
and linger in that immersion.
But it paled and disappeared behind a white curtain gliding across the sky.
It played with me like a toddler, cheerful and self-assured.
Hiding its face and calling out – where am I?
It was Infinite like the growing and fading sound of a Tibetan bowl
easily penetrating every cell of the body and even deeper
It was like moving light on a sleeping face in the morning
Open your eyes
And look at me
It’s Me
The Immortal Essence
I am Blue
Especially for you today
August 8, 2023 – The Gate of Leo
Meeting with Elvira Eevr Djaltchinova. Nejad Devrim. The Birth of Blue.
Everything falls into place like a puzzle. It turns out that certain elements, distant from each other, mean nothing. Thoughts, meetings, conversations, objects that come into hands, colors. And suddenly, when these elements come close together in an unexpected series of events, they begin to create a whole, and an image is formed. It turns out that none of these elements is a meaningless isolated entity but exists in anticipation of connection with others. Everything serves a purpose, and nothing exists in isolation. Life is an inseparable continuum that revolves in circles, within which squares, triangles, semicircles, and other figures creating sacred geometry are inscribed. Spatial, three-dimensional, infinite. Fields of figures are filled with colors and light. Like in Nejad’s paintings.
At Elvira’s meeting, Nejad Devrim appeared in my life – a Turkish painter who, at a certain point in his life, chose Poland – a country behind the Iron Curtain – as his dream place in the world. He rejected Paris, where he lived, a shared studio with Picasso, close friendship with Gertrude Stein, and the rest of the artistic elite of that era. Coming from a royal family in the Middle East, he chose impoverished communist Poland. He lived, created, started a family here. And here he died. He claimed that poverty inspired him.
Listening to Nejad’s extraordinary life story, simultaneously browsing through an album of his paintings – I saw a connection. Blue. The most closely guarded color in the history of the world. The recipes for this color used in porcelain production were closely guarded by the Chinese. Blue has been present in various cultures since ancient times – in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, but it was the Chinese who specialized in the technology of obtaining an extremely intense shade of blue in porcelain production from the 13th century.
Nejad used blue throughout his life. His paintings are like expressionistic stained glass windows. Colors shine as if penetrated by light. They are applied as if they merge through attraction, naturally reaching each other to create a perfectly composed whole. Like complementary chords in Bach’s fugues, where threads and wefts intertwine to create a fabric woven with many voices. Other times, the lightness and elation of Chopin, the madness of Mozart. Nejad’s blue palette is rich. From turquoise green to cold shades of ultramarine. Shimmering, interpenetrating, yet pure and vivid.
Life as an artist in Poland was difficult. Knowing five languages, he couldn’t communicate without knowing Polish. He chose to speak to himself. He recorded his thoughts on tapes. A microcosm of thoughts and words, around him and only for him. Communication in a closed circuit, separated from the rest of the world. Like the blue of Chinese porcelain.
In the color symbolism of chakras, blue corresponds to the throat chakra. This chakra is responsible for communication. It is connected to the sacral chakra – in women, the place of the womb, the uterus – where life is created and from which menstrual blood cyclically flows.
My painting “The Birth of Blue” is a story about communication that was blocked for a long time and suddenly breaks free. As if the walls of the throat could no longer contain the whirlwind of blue, and the dams burst. It flows like a released waterfall from my body along with menstrual blood. I didn’t understand these coincidences and deep symbolism yet. Only when the painting was created did I see my life in it. The liberated whirlwind of blue created an infinite mountain landscape.
Tribute to Nejad Devrim.
Description of objects from the display case (click to enlarge):
“The Birth of Orange”

“The Birth of Orange”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x 100x120cm), 2023
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Orange was born on its own.
Without anyone’s help – mine as well.
It took matters into its own hands, full of energy,
with wild enthusiasm and a wild passion for creation.
At first, it was violent and fast.
Then, it wanted to last.
Sometimes slowly – like a wide, flowing river,
other times quickly like a swift, cold stream.
Close to fire and sun – in the center. Centrally.
After that, without knowing when,
it changed places and flowed
in the unrestrained pleasure of spreading around.
It burst from the eye of Prussian blue and ashy grey,
and pink surrounded it like a luminous balm of delight.
Later, in the dark, there were more explosions.
Currents were formed.
They emerged. Flowed.
Sometimes spurted.
Bubbled at the source.
It is from them and within them that Orange was born.
Or,
It was born out of nothing
And they flowed into it.
Description of objects from the display case (click to enlarge):
“The Birth of Black”

“The Birth of Black”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x 100x120cm), 2022
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Synchronicity
Fullness and Emptiness
Circle
Ouroboros
Appeared in my life
In the tale of Mi
Psychedelic vision
Expanded consciousness
Devouring its own head
Mighty and shimmering
Majestic in simultaneous dying and becoming.
Then came
The Scarab Beetle
Egyptian Deity
God of the rising sun
Sacred creature
Untouchable
Glistening with metallic brilliance.
Rolling the ball of dung, from which
Is born
As if from nothingness
Offspring
Description of objects from the display case (click to enlarge):
“The Birth of White”

“The Birth of White”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x100x120cm), 2022
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I didn’t know that Whiteness would be born. The painting was evolving like a grand sketch. Decisive brushstrokes guided my body like a capoeira dance. I painted it in one breath – a polyphony of black and white that waged some kind of battle on the canvas. Black overwhelmed, wanting to seize space, but Whiteness ultimately held it. However, Whiteness could not be born without Black. Physically, I felt the weight of this blackness as the weight of your life. Coiled black clouds on both sides of the painting tried to penetrate the center, but it was impossible. The force of Whiteness seemed to stop them and turn them back.
In the middle, a mountain grew from earthly black matter. The higher it went, the brighter and more shining with the whiteness of frozen snow. In a sense, this mountain is a human, with anthropomorphic features – hands reaching towards the earth as if trying to hold on. Or perhaps these hands are mine, holding onto this mountain – you – on the ground? The summit of the mountain merges with the Void and Fullness of pure whiteness. Your Soul, in the form of a white bird, soars above the earthly dimension. It is free.
Tribute to my Mom
Description of objects from the display case (click to enlarge):
“The Birth of Pink”

“The Birth of Pink”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x100x120cm), 2022
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The Rose sprouted from the penis of the god of love with a face adorned with a large third eye in the forehead. The facial topography of the god was non-human, consisting only of the Eye. Each eye contained a tunnel of eyes within it, with each subsequent eye revolving around its own axis. And so, into the infinite depths. It saw me. With that tunnel of eyes, it entered me where it pleased, seeing me entirely from the outside and the inside.
“The Birth of Gold”

“The Birth of Gold”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x100x120cm), 2022
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Synchronicity
Fullness and Emptiness
Circle
Ouroboros
Appeared in my life
In the tale of Mi
Psychedelic vision
Expanded consciousness
Devouring its own head
Mighty and shimmering
Majestic in simultaneous dying and becoming.
Then came
The Scarab Beetle
Egyptian Deity
God of the rising sun
Sacred creature
Untouchable
Glistening with metallic brilliance.
Rolling the ball of dung, from which
Is born
As if from nothingness
Offspring
“The Birth of Lotus”

“The Birth of Lotus”, acrylic on canvas, 200x120cm (2x 100x120cm), 2023
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The Birth of Colours concluded with a symbolic eleventh painting – The Birth of the Lotus, which is a symbol of purity, transformation, and enlightenment, and for me, also a symbol of light. Colour does not exist without light; therefore, it had to be born.
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The catalogue
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Partners and patrons
