Niebieski Ptak (Jan Dorman wg M. Meaterlincka 1963)

"'Niebieski Ptak (Jan Dorman wg M. Maeterlincka 1963)' [The Blue Bird (Jan Dorman after M. Maeterlinck 1963)] is based on an image of the staging of the eponymous play by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949). 'L'Oiseau bleu' (The Blue Bird) is a 1908 text by the Nobel Prize winner Belgian author that has been the subject of several films and TV series, including one directed by Jan Dorman, the founder and director of a theatre for children in Poland. A play about happiness, in which two children pursue spiritual joy, 'L'Oiseau bleu' considers whether happiness should be based on material objects and luxuries or in simple, ethereal things. The painting reflects Ołowska’s interest in both social utopias and theatre, particularly in stage sets.
Ołowska works in a range of media encompassing painting, performance, music and textiles. Through her work, she explores the fascination of communist Poland with Western consumerist culture. Her paintings, drawings and collages replicate iconography from American and Eastern European popular culture to create unexpected intersections and disruptive associations. Ołoswka plunges into the gigantic archive of the last one hundred years of art, architecture, design, decorative arts and advertising to produce a work that reflects a singular image of that iconography, intertwining personal stories (such as her feminist stance in life and art) and the ghosts of modernism to ask: ‘Whatever happened to last century’s utopias, to the belief in progress?’."