– BWA Zielona Góra, exhibition Leon Tarasewicz’s Visiting Studio, 2001
– Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, diploma exhibition, 2001

My first encounter with the artist’s work was just as surprising as the second one in Lublin. In September 2001, the graduation exhibition of the students from Professor Leon Tarasewicz’s painting studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw took place at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. I passed by excellent paintings (by Krzysztof Buczak, Aleksandra Kulik and Anna Wojnarowska), until I finally reached the last room, given over to Bogna Burska. I entered a white corridor whose white walls were smeared with a bloody liquid. As if a bleeding, fleeing figure had been staggering against them, striking them with her hands in terror. Leaving a trace on the wall. A trace as a record of the body, a record of drama. The installation was completed by four expressionist acrylic abstractions painted by the artist with her hands. Two were red and black, two were exclusively red.My first encounter with the artist’s work was just as surprising as the second one in Lublin. In September 2001, the graduation exhibition of the students from Professor Leon Tarasewicz’s painting studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw took place at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. I passed by excellent paintings (by Krzysztof Buczak, Aleksandra Kulik and Anna Wojnarowska), until I finally reached the last room, given over to Bogna Burska. I entered a white corridor whose white walls were smeared with a bloody liquid. As if a bleeding, fleeing figure had been staggering against them, striking them with her hands in terror. Leaving a trace on the wall. A trace as a record of the body, a record of drama. The installation was completed by four expressionist acrylic abstractions painted by the artist with her hands. Two were red and black, two were exclusively red.

Red dominated everywhere. Was it through just such a corridor that the girl from the house with the little bed had fled? These installations should be shown together, for they are related architectural spaces of wound and terror. What they also share is the suggestion of femininity and signs of violence inflicted on the female body. The artist smeared the bloody red paintings with her own hands. And so domestic violence returns once again, as does rape. The female body, girls’ bodies as victims. Who is the perpetrator? Does a division between perpetrator and victim even exist? Or are we dealing each time with traces of acts of self-destruction, as in Polański’s film? Perhaps the victim is the aggressor, especially toward herself. The viewer is the detective; the meaning remains open. And yet, is there something more here?

And then, suddenly, a flash of insight!

The Shining. This corridor by Bogna Burska is like the corridors of Stephen King’s haunted hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation. A flood of blood pouring over the walls.

excerpt from the text Architecture of Violence by Paweł Leszkowicz, Arteon, 2002