A return to the beginnings

Hovering in the air.
(...)
Like on a wave,
Like on a tightrope,
Like over a precipice you are making your way.
/Leszek A. Moczulski, A Tightrope Walker, fragment/

When we look at Anna Szyłło’s graphic works or drawings, designs of book illustrations as well, at the very first moment it seems to us that we stand in front of images that are just friendly and intimate, the melancholic world of our dreams, nostalgia and memories.

That peculiar area is inhabited by figures originating from the recesses of imagination and books for children, from a little bit surreal – or at least unusual - world, characters from fairy tales, dreams, from an imaginary theatre or circus stage. The sky is crowded with half-human fantastic winged creatures. In the idyllic atmosphere lovers blow soap bubbles, dancers pirouette, conjurers juggle cards, a monkey cranks a barrel organ.

There are some figures from the land spread between the truth and illusion. Between the concrete and pretence. Melancholy and nostalgia permeate the image, but there is also a tiring recollection and a fear of the unknown. A naive belief and deceit. The world is full of suspicious jugglers, malicious cats and tempting she-cats, the phantom of death rises from a chimney, a tree shouts, a horse rider balances on a patched up horse’s back of a rocking horse, the truth like a poison trickles into one’s ear. It is not deprived of people-dummies and people-stickers. We can see Icarus – the unsuccessful aviator. The figure from commedia dell’arte: always sad Pierrot, Colombina stripped of her underwired dress. A wide array of losers, risk-takers, creatures fighting against fate, ridiculous and deplorable ones. It is in a way a suspicious and sad world, the stale reality of low rank.

It is obvious why the artist recalls so many motives typical of the world of theatre and circus, why she appeals to the subject of performance. The circus is a kind of entertainment, fun, attraction, but simultaneously a pinch of jugglery, innocent deceit, it is a surprise and mystery. An institution which is almost nomadic, slightly isolated from life, thus partly unknown and hardly accepted, like a kind of sect.

In Anna Szyłło’s artworks the circus becomes a multistorey metaphor of life. We are not sure about anything there, we are sometimes surprised by what is good and what is bad. A perverse demiurge plays with us like with puppets and ironically laughs behind the scenes. The perpetuum of the cycle of births and deaths lasts, the wheel of time goes round.

In many works, particularly in compositions on fabric, this existential context is developed more extensively and in a wider perspective. Already in graphic works and drawings figures’ representations were accompanied by varied symbols: the moon, the sun, the triangle and the ‘Eye of Providence’, the apple, the lily. They come from different cultures and traditions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Aboriginal tradition, Christianity. However, in Anna Szyłło’s works they build a syncretic vision. They indicate a certain unity of beliefs and convictions, expressed by means of different mythologems, pictorial elements and notions. They represent the artist’s philosophical approach to the world and life.

She uses certain imagery motives somehow at a higher level of speculation. The figurative and abstract components filling the planes go out beyond the space of private imagination, dreams or fairy tales. To a large extent they relate to archetypal motives, myths and religious beliefs. They are like a pose- or beyond culture, they escape from the primitive thought, emotional and mental space of a given area to create a vision of the world that expresses what is unifying. The components are different in various cultures, but in all of them it is possible to reveal some primeval elements that show amazing coherence. They can be found both in images about the origin of the Universe (cosmogony) as well as in beliefs concerning its structure and evolution (cosmology).

With regard to some aforementioned works, we can use the term ‘dreamtime’, but it would be only a metaphor pointing to their oneiric surrealistic dimension. In her works Anna Szyłło refers to ‘dreamtime’ described by Aborigines, the time before creation of the physical material world. Even nowadays we are likely to penetrate ‘dreamtime’ or at least to communicate with spirits living there. Aborigines reckon that all creatures on the Earth, all events and their traces in reality make the continuum of ‘dreamtime’ and they are related with one another.

Therefore, the mythical Cosmic Ocean which filled the world before creation – that vast expanse encompassing the Heavenly, Terrestrial and Underground Ocean, the motive of the beginning – still exists. It is represented not only by all earthly reservoirs, but it also flows in heavens and in the third great sphere of the universe – the underground land. It is a figure in Anna Szyłło’s works. The unity understood in the categories of time, space and cultural space. To understand the essence and the meaning of imagery references applied in the artworks, being aware of a great number of possible interpretations, we should reject various perspectives limiting their interpretation and to look at the whole more comprehensively.

In the iconosphere of Anna Szyłło’s works some water creatures living on the border of chthonic and aquatic sphere are recurring motives. The connection of sea animals with water is perceived at a higher, mythological level, as relating to the mythical Cosmic Ocean. They personify life in the depths. After death they come back again to the chaos in order to be reborn. Souls are produced from the abyss of death, depicted in the form of fish.

The fish is a frequent motive of works under discussion; it is strongly connected with water, with the primeval matter of existence – like the bird with the sphere of the sky. No wonder that in Anna Szyłło’s works winged fishes wander in the smooth sky, the Heavenly Ocean, being only a part of the mythical Cosmic Ocean. Their image and cult are a reflection of one of the oldest components of myths created by mankind. In some works we can also find pictures of the sixleg- forms (just to mention six-leg Perpetuum), like a reflection of a starfish’s image – being simultaneously a water and aerial creature.

In her works on paper and fabric the artist evokes the myth about the Rainbow Serpent which, pushing down the earth, created mountains and it takes care of water springs. The serpent is connected with the Earth; however, it is also present in the underground world full of ‘primeval’ vital liquid. The serpent, once an attribute of water, became later, like the fish, a symbol of fertility and life. In compositions on fabric the motive of the Rainbow Serpent appears together with the woman’s image. It is placed on her body, being associated with biological potency.

In Anna Szyłło’s creation the feminine figure is a frequent point of existential references. Its imagery dimension is often gained by abstract notions associated with mythology, religion and philosophy. The fabric relates to and develops motives which have already been signalled in graphic and drawing works.

Sansara reminds us that all kind of phenomena are subjected to the endless cycle of changes from creation up to collapse. We continually wander, stuck in the wheel of birth and death, not only in the sense of the beginning and the end of physical existence. The artist is very consistent when she develops that motive, using themes and a set of props-symbols to relate to the notions of ignorance and insecurity (Avidya), illusion (Maya) – obvious in the context of the constant process of development, transformation and return, expressed by means of feminine personifications.

Feminine sensuality, her vital energy as well as hope which she brings are evoked by the red of some chosen attributes. Carefully selected requisites, playing the role of expressive and ambivalent symbols, express the ubiquitous dualism connected with the element of femininity. Placed on the female womb, a sign of physical desire and delight, but also suffering connected with cyclicity of biological processes that lead to conception and births – indicate different aspects of femininum. The apple is the first of these elements – it is a symbol of abundance and life, and also voluptuous love – when it became a tool of cognition, it introduced dualism of good and evil, life and death, love and disagreement, it destroyed cohesion of the whole. In the context of the whole artwork the apple turns to be an extremely capacious sign relating to the problem of immortality, compensated by an eternal search and a thirst of knowledge. Another symbol is the lily, a frequent imagery motive here, a flower which grew from Eve’s tears when she was leaving the paradise; on the one hand a sign of shyness and innocence, and on the other – desire and fertility, a symbol of feminine beauty as well as delusive ostentation, purifying rebirth, but also sadness.

Another important sign of the ever-lasting change connected with the feminine element is the lizard which is able to reproduce its tail and to get rid of its skin, thus its image relates to the archetypes of death and resurrection. However, it is related to a very significant symbolic area which is evoked by solar and lunar motives. They are the ones which are most often represented by Anna Szyłło. The images of the Sun, standing for the masculine element are juxtaposed with lunar images, equivalents of the feminine element. In culture the moon is strictly associated with what is feminine, with regard to the cyclicity characteristic of its existence, and also due to the connections with the phenomena of sea tides. It is considered to be the master of rain, it is related to water, the same way as the symbol of the Sun is associated with the Earth.

Anna Szyłło’s artwork is very rich; it is manifested in many different ways of artistic expression. The artist accurately and deliberately chooses and differentiates means of expression. Her works are characterised by a perfect, fine line, precise yet unconstrained drawing that subtly forms multi-layered plans. We can say that the authoress draws by means of a needle point but also “embroiders” with pen and ink. The line is rather blurred, lines obtained in the technique of drypoint are similarly soft. Much like stains of colour obtained with the use of the monotyping technique. The line, vivid, ubiquitous, especially in multi-figurative compositions, traverses the surface of the picture, influencing our perception and it stops us to have a look at surprising, spectacular details over and over again. Some latest works, made in the pastel or crayon technique, and particularly the cycles of book illustrations, e.g. the cycle Madonnas, have a more synthetic character. Drawings marked by the value of a simplified sign are depicted by thicker line.

Anna Szyłło’s artwork is an expression of the most fundamental and obvious search every man undertakes. In her peregrination she heads for the world that spreads between reality and illusion, towards the sea of the eternal mythical present. That attitude is similar to the one described by Mircea Eliade, ‘it does not mean the rejection of the real world and an escape into dream and imagination. (…). For to wish to reintegrate the time of origin is also to wish to return to the presence of gods, to recover the strong, fresh, pure world that existed in illo tempore. It is at once a thirst for the sacred and nostalgia for being. On the existential plane this experience finds expression in the certainty that life can be periodically begun over and over again with a maximum of good fortune. Indeed, it is not only an optimistic vision of existence, but a total cleaving to being.’ *

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Transl. Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska

*M. Eliade, The sacred and the profane. The nature of the religion, translated from the French by Willard R. Trask, A Harvest Book Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc, New York 1959, p. 94.