Body/ the Crisis of Insight

The project is the result of many years of artistic practice, growing out of personal experience and a need to revise
the relationship between artistic creation and bodily experience of the world. This work is deeply personal—not
in the sense of autobiographical narrative, but as a record of a long-term internal process in which the body becomes
the primary tool of cognition, memory, and communication. At the core of the project lies the creative energy of the body, understood as a field that is both shared and individual, shaped by experience, history, and sensitivity. The project reflects on non-verbal and affective communication, situating it beyond normative categories of intellect, control, and productivity. In this perspective, the body functions as a medium of intuition and resonance, and art as a practice of resistance against the dominance of ideas over experience.

An important context for the work is the tradition of art brut and raw art, understood as a space of emancipation from aesthetic and institutional norms. Referring to the thought of Jean Dubuffet, the project emphasizes art as a domain free from hierarchy, market forces, and exclusivity, in which creative energy precedes intellectual superstructure.

The primary medium of the project is drawing, appearing in various forms: autonomous works on paper, double-layered bas-reliefs, and sculptural objects. Drawings are often placed within geometric structures reminiscent of architectural models, functioning as “houses” for images. The process of layering reflects both a personal need for sculpting and an interest in the relationship between fragment and whole, element and structure.

A crucial aspect of the project is the practice of citing, copying, and remaking works by artists associated with raw art. This gesture does not constitute appropriation, but rather a form of dialogue and resonance—a way of approaching another’s creative energy and lived experience. The project assumes that artistic creation is a process of mutual influence, based on rhythm, trance, and a shared field of consciousness, and that all forms are treated as entities possessing their own agency.

The exhibition by Ekaterina Shadkovska constitutes an integral part of the doctoral process conducted at the Faculty
of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. The doctoral dissertation is supervised by Dr. hab. Aleksandra Knaflewska (Ska), prof. of AS in Szczecin.