Ewa Juszkiewicz’s Venice exhibition brings collectively 5 years of faceless portraits

In one of many work in Ewa Juszkiewicz’s new Venice exhibition, a girl in a protracted black robe and crimson scarf perches on a rock, a lyre resting underneath her left hand. For these aware of Nineteenth-century French portraiture, this work by the Warsaw-based artist—and up to date market sensation—would possibly seem acquainted, and so it ought to. Juszkiewicz’s oil portray, which sits at virtually 9 toes tall, is impressed by an 1804 portrait by the French painter François Gérard.

But whereas each depict the identical topic—Countess Katarzyna Joanna Gabrielle Starzenska, a distinguished determine in Polish aristocracy—there’s one distinct distinction: in Juszkiewicz’s model, the topic’s face is totally coated by wraps of crimson, white and black material. This aesthetic system has develop into one thing of a trademark for Juszkiewicz, who makes use of concealment as a way of drawing consideration to, and critiquing, historic depictions of ladies. As she tells The Artwork Newspaper: “I need to construct my very own story of those ladies, and undermine magnificence conventions and idealisations, particularly within the artwork from the 18th and Nineteenth century.”

Locks with Leaves and Swellings Buds at Venice’s Palazzo Cavanis (till 1 September) exhibits how she has progressed on this mission over the previous 5 years, by way of a wide range of approaches to a topic. Included among the many 15 works, all accomplished since 2019, is Untitled (after Joseph van Lerius) (2020), the place thick locks of blonde hair obscure the feminine topic’s face. There’s additionally Chicken of paradise (2023), the place the central determine is sort of fully engulfed by foliage, and Girl with a Pearl (after François Gérard) (2024), the place a girl is enveloped by a vibrant crimson material, a single pearl dangling from her head.

In every portray, Juszkiewicz hopes to spotlight the methods wherein the portraits she is referencing didn’t do their sitters justice. In Girl with a Pearl, for instance, “I made a decision solely to maintain the pearl and canopy the entire portrait, which was very idealised,” she says. In her reimagining of Gérard’s 1804 portray of the countess, in the meantime, she hopes to attract consideration to the “passive” and “expressionless” depiction of the girl within the authentic work, regardless of her being “a star of her time and function mannequin for different ladies”. She additionally needs to deliver to the fore the contradictions inside ladies’s trend of the time, which whereas “stunning” was additionally “uncomfortable” and “oppressive”.

Every of Juszkiewicz’s work had been chosen with the setting of the palazzo, constructed between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on the Giudecca Canal, in thoughts. “The unique parts [of the building] like marble are actually putting, and I feel they’re in an amazing dialogue with my work,” she says. What’s extra, she provides, Venice extra broadly supplies an appropriate backdrop, stuffed with artwork and structure that mixes the “modern with the standard, like in my work”.

The present comes after a interval wherein demand for Juszkiewicz’s work amongst collectors hit heady heights. In 2022, her Portrait of a Girl (After Louis Leopold Boilly) (2019), offered for $1.5m at Christie’s—far surpassing its excessive estimate of $300,000. Curiosity has remained excessive, albeit with costs settling, for now, inside six figures.

However this sharp rise to fame “hasn’t actually influenced the way in which I work”, Juszkiewicz says. “I simply give attention to the work and what I need to say.”