When night fell during the day | Barbara Mydlak's solo exhibition

OPENING: 04.03, 2026 (Wednesday) at 17:00

Location: Szewska Gallery, Szewska 16, Poznań, Poland
Duration: 05.03-29.03, 2026

Curtains — objects that situate themselves in-between. They are reactive membranes operating at the junction of light and darkness, as well as of what is external and what is intimate. They are liminal entities, existing neither here nor there, in a permanent state of suspension [1].
Situated in timelessness, on the boundary between before and after, they symbolically establish a threshold between the worlds of the living and the dead. They separate stage and audience, fiction and reality. They mark the beginning and the end of the performance. The opening of the curtain causes us to become observers or active participants in the event.
The introduction of a reversal of day and night is, for me, a symbolic gesture and may function as a form of passage or transfer into another world.

[1] V. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Cornell University Press, New York, 1991, p. 95.

*Visitors are invited to read the small books presented in the exhibition and to experience the scents - the fragrance laboratory vials can be opened.

Curated by:
Natalia Czarcińska, Jerzy Muszyński, Dorota Tarnowska - Urbanik
Poster design: Natalia Brodacka

Support & Partners:
Magdalena Abakanowicz University of Fine Arts in Poznań
City of Poznań

More information [PL]

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BARBARA MYDLAK
Website | Instagram

Barbara Mydlak (born in 1987 in Poland) is an artist working between Poland and Belgium, currently living in Ghent. She creates organic, fibrous objects, among others, from cellulose obtained from discarded plants, whose origin and application, as well as pigments, scents, healing properties, and defence mechanisms determine the form and meaning of the installations, often expanded with film, photography, documentation of the process and research, sound, or interactive elements.

Her work develops in long-term cycles and is strongly connected with nature and the regional traditions of south-eastern Poland, where she grew up. Drawing on autobiographical experiences, her works address themes of forgetting and modifying memories, as well as rituals related to illness, healing, death, growth and decay.

She studied archaeology at the University of Warsaw and graduated from the Faculty of Visual Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź; in 2024, she obtained her PhD at the M. Abakanowicz University of Arts in Poznań. Her projects have been presented among others at: the Venice Production Bridge as part of the Venice Biennale, 'The New Crafts' International Invitation Exhibition at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing; The Splendid Languages of Paper: Contemporary Art on Chinese Papermaking Culture at the Zheijang Art Museum (ZJAM) in Hangzhou; Museum of Contemporary Art in Wroclaw; National Museum in Poznan. She is a finalist of the COAL Prize 2023 in Paris and a recipient of grants from, among others, the Centre National du Cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC) in France (2025) and Arts Decree (Kunstendecreet) in Flanders (2024).