ALEKSANDRA CEGIELSKA

Across nine intimately scaled yet powerfully resonant canvases, a narrative of feminine force unfurls - layered, luminous, and deeply personal. Each painting is titled with the name of a woman whose presence has marked the artist’s life: a daughter, a friend, a collector, a witness. These are not portraits in the traditional sense, but emotional topographies - each canvas a vessel of memory, strength, and reciprocity.

Individually, Alyson, Mariam, Josefien, Laila, Dagmara, Denise, Grace, Svenja, and Rose represent singular acts of becoming. Together, when hung in close formation, they form a unified body - one artwork composed of many lives, echoing the multiplicity of womanhood and the interdependence that fortifies it. Their proximity is intentional, a visual metaphor for solidarity: no figure is isolated, no narrative complete without the others.

This series celebrates the radical tenderness of female friendship while also addressing the fissures imposed by patriarchal conditioning - those subtle and systemic forces that can estrange women from one another. Through chromatic nuance, gestural layering, and compositional tension, the artist charts the emotional terrain of these relationships: the intimacies, the ruptures, the redemptive power of coming together.

In honoring the women who have stood beside her, the artist offers a broader meditation on collective strength, asking: what becomes possible when women see each other fully, and stand not in comparison, but in communion?

No woman exists, without the other.