Owing to popular culture, we expect to be given ready-made recipes for life. Just stick to the procedures and everything will be fine. Compendiums, guides, how-to books, even Netflix series offer simple solutions to complex fears and crises, locking us in a cognitive limbo. It’s as if we’ve forgotten about the humanity’s self-preservation instinct. There is something of a code within us that supports the daily operations of our body and mind without resorting to the rhetoric of development coaches. I look for archetypes in educational culture and ponder on the meaning of the self-education instinct.
The title of this exhibition is borrowed from a swimming manual: Easy Steps to Safe Swimming. The book contains a series of pictograms showing bodies struggling against the resistance of water. I removed the descriptive texts from the charts so that they resemble a universal pictorial language. Like antique script-bearing artefacts, these schematic illustrations provide inspiration for the imagination. What meanings will they open up in the mind of an experienced swimmer? Will they produce the same associations in the imagination of a yoga practitioner or rainmaker? Historical patterns provide an open field for interpretation, encouraging us to think about our own educational past.
Magdalena Sadłowska is a graduate of the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (Prof. Jarosław Bauć’s studio). In her practice, she uses various media, such as painting, drawing, object and installation. Between 2016 and 2021, she was a resident at the Artists’s Colony in Gdańsk’s Dolne Miasto. In 2017/2018, she received the scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. Her work has been exhibited at various art shows and previews, including solo exhibitions: Nowe kroje, Krupa Gallery, Wrocław and Ćwiczka-ćwicząca, Artists’ Colony – Dolne Miasto, Gdańsk as well as collective shows: ŚLAD, Fabryka Sztuki in Łódź; Triennale of Drawing, BWA Wrocław; Gdańsk Biennale of Art, Gdańsk City Gallery; Nationwide W. Fangor Student Painting Competition in Gdańsk (2018), where she received the Dean’s Reward of the Faculty of Painting; Young Wolves 18, TRAFO Gallery, Szczecin.