Complexes have been with me forever. They tear me apart and block me, and at the same time push me forward and motivate me. I try to manage them, but they always come back. I wonder... where did they come from? From my home? From my blood? From my environment? From being a woman? Or maybe from being Polish? Michał Bilewicz writes in his book Traumaland that "we will remain for a long time a society that is distrustful, hypersensitive about itself, negatively evaluating itself, and at the same time narcissistic, pessimistic... a fundamental trait of the culture is complaining and preparing for the next failure." In this project, my creative work becomes a tool to look into the past, forgive, and redefine identity.

(Marta Nadolle)

Some things have been hidden since the beginning of time, even things that have been right there in front of us the entire time. Perhaps that is why they remain in the shadows. It takes a lot of patience, affection, focus and courage to find the path to the truth and see it with our own eyes.

Marta Nadolle knows this path well. She considers the world around her with care, plucking out uncanny moments of truth. When I see her works, the stories they tell, I feel incredibly moved, even if I don't always understand why. It takes some time to immerse myself in the situation, read the signs, set my way of seeing into the context of the image, its instants, this synthesis of layers, a series of experiences that have grown together organically. Marta's works come from the gut, an honesty drawn from personal memory, which happens to belong to her, but which also flows naturally into my own. Is this what they refer to as the universality of truth? Pain and fear are indeed universal, as are longing and love. The whole problem is rooted in welcoming them into the visual world, to make them seen, to bring them out of hiding, out of shame.There are vital spaces in our world that we prefer to keep at arm's length.

Wounds, scars, trauma, bad memories. We cut ourselves off from the things that frighten us, we try to grow out them, distancing ourselves from these encounters, relationships, situations, individuals. In distancing ourselves, we avoid confrontation and yet without confronting them, we can't really move on, we can't truly grow. Memories need to be recalled, mourned, wept over. To feel the hurt or hopelessness once more, to drown in it, but knowing that we can still find our way back out of it. Marta Nadolle's paintings offer a deeply therapeutic opportunity to take a sideways glance at myself, my loved ones, my fears. To grasp a moment of ambiguity, times when reality is revealed to be nothing but an illusion. In the end, impressions linger, words linger, phrases torn out of context in the heat of conversation, a heart torn in two.

Three of her paintings in particular come to mind when I think of her work. The first is a call to fury and action. It depicts a young woman (Marta herself?) being assaulted in the drawing studio by an old, lecherous art professor. It is just the two of them in the studio space. She's hanging her works up on the wall, her signature is evident. It's also clear there is a battle ensuing, between whether it's best to tell the story as a one-off or to come collectively into the trauma of this experience, which many of her peers have experienced, as countless generations of young art students continue to endure.

"Now everybody has a story about somebody who grabbed their ass one time." Except that "one time" is ten years ago and that "somebody" is the art professor. This sentence, which I've personally heard too many times to count, carries an enormous weight of contempt, coupled with the notion that a certain status gives one access to betray the bodily autonomy of those under their tutelage and care. I wish this was just a picture and not an everyday reality. I wish it would never happen again in any school. For no one to have to turn around in fear and disgust to catch a glimpse of their heinous abuser any longer.

The second painting that strikes me depicts Marta on an examination table. Her body is covered with a sheet, but her black stocking-clad legs stick out at one end, her shoulders, neck and head at the other. An aesthetician wearing blue latex gloves is injecting her face, explaining, "I know it hurts but I need to inject more of the product, to improve the effect." Beyond the physical discomfort, there's a sense of good old female solidarity. There's no choir applauding or reviling the practice. There's a quiet understanding, a bond of trust and support between a professional in her field and a novice getting her first treatment. The aesthetician is offering to add more product, to improve the effects of the treatment, to lengthen the time between visits, going against protocol. In a way, she is acting against her own interests, but at the same time, she is doting on her patient, making her feel seen. This slight body covered with a sheet and the calm demeanor of the aesthetician forms a juxtaposition between the novice and the master as they go through the ritual of initiation together.

The third painting I come back to often is Marta's portrait of her father. It touches me a great deal, the way she's composed all his vital attributes, his life, him driving a car and listening to Nick Cave. I recently attended a concert of Nick's and I cried when he was talking about the death of his son. He sang through an impossible pain, an irredeemable tragedy. When I saw this painting of Marta's father listening to the same music, I felt as though it was filling me with love and I thought of my own father.

In his essay "On Giving Up," Adam Philips writes about the incapacity to give up as the incapacity to accept loss, to accept the flow of time and understand what comes of it.

It isn't until we look at life from another perspective that we can begin the process of healing, to forgive the world and yourself for your sorrows. Marta Nadolle's paintings form a journal a rebour, a record of lost moments. This stands in contrast to the classic mimetic paradigm, where the goal is to immortalize and glorify. Instead, it's an declawing exercise, a way of reducing harm, closing misfortune up in a frame, locking a situation up to keep it from coming back too frequently. And there's more. With just the right effort, it's possible to tell a story in a way that makes it palatable, without resorting to lies. Marta is capable of telling a tale of happiness, which can make you smile, but also allows you to experience a similar feeling, a wave of nostalgia.

There are things in the world that we can't see because they're just too close. It can be hard to untangle them, to find the beginning of the thread, to chase it and try to straighten things out for ourselves. I think I miss a great deal of what's happening around me, the details of daily life, even if I find myself tripping over them quite a bit. I might lack focus, attention, determination, perhaps a bit of courage, to take an instant and shove it under a microscope, to magnify it, take a closer look at the thing because I can't foresee where this kind of investigation might take me. I'm grateful that Marta Nadolle takes on this burden in her work, managing to create a synthesis of everyday reality that carries a unique significance and universality.

(Text by Katarzyna Kasia. Translation by Agnes Monod-Gayraud)