Artist in RESIDENCE: hELENA sTIASNY
During the Sarah Kravitz Residency Programme, Polish painter Helena Stiasny developed a body of work rooted in feminist critique and lived experience.
Stiasny’s practice engages with the politics of representation, challenging the structures of the ‘male gaze’ famously articulated by John Berger. Her paintings reject passive depictions of women, instead presenting figures who return the gaze and assert their presence as self-possessed and autonomous subjects.
Informed by the resurgence of feminist activism in Poland, particularly the women’s strike protests of 2020–2021, her work is inherently anti-patriarchal. Through portraiture, Stiasny explores how identity, agency, and visibility are negotiated within both personal and political contexts.
Her recent paintings focus on women encountered during her time on the residency programme, from local individuals to fellow artists. Grounded in these real-life interactions, the works emphasise connection, solidarity, and shared experience, reflecting a central proposition of the protests in her homeland, that collective strength emerges through unity.
