Self-Portrait with Roses

Marzanna Morozewicz’s Self-Portrait with Roses is closely related to the artist’s series of works which she calls Łuski [Shells]. These are prints of parts of her body made with plaster, bandages and paper. The Shells, blanketed in abstract, vivid-coloured painted compositions are a distant echo of masks worn on the face. The impulse behind their creation was the artist’s coming into direct contact with the tradition of ritual body painting and masks practiced by North American natives. This remote source of cultural inspiration stimulated in Morozewicz’s work a positive approach to the body as a canvas for creation.

Both the Shells series and Self-Portrait with Roses can be treated as a record of physical changes and emotions reflected in the body. These works are non-standard portraits that solidify those body parts that are of no interest to typical portraitists (who usually focus on the face), but which also reflect the passage of time and the subject’s condition. After all, the body leaves very clear marks on the Shells, especially on their interiors: the plaster invariably captures the texture of the skin and tiny flakes of skin remain embedded in it forever.

Morozewicz’s self-portrait in plaster, an imprint of her neckline and part of her face, is covered in paper printed with a rose motif. The artist’s methods and her choice of decorative motifs lead to deliberations on the interdependence between the body and the stereotypical perception of femininity in Western European culture. The ambivalence of the symbolism attributed to the rose, oscillating between good and evil, endows the piece with an ambiguity that impedes a definitive determination of the nature of the self-portrait. The rose is an attribute of both the Virgin Mary and Venus, a symbol of godly love and earthly love. It is both the seductive beauty of the flower and the pain inflicted by the thorn. Connotations of beauty, eroticism and sexual pleasure assert the body, while the suggestion of pain, suffering and sin seem to deny and condemn it. In Self-Portrait with Roses, sensual delight coexists with a feeling of guilt, constituting a very personal statement by the artist.

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