Stanisława Walichnowska
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Jun 26
- 7 min read
Stanisława Walichnowska works across painting, spatial forms, design, and poetry. Her practice reflects on everyday absurdities, drawing attention to visual habits shaped by architecture, consumer culture, and temporary design. She uses irony and humor to explore themes like alienation, social discomfort, and the impact of kitsch. Her imagery often recalls video game aesthetics, childhood obsessions, or discarded objects that carry emotional charge. Through exaggerated forms and symbolic detail, she captures the tension between sentiment and spectacle. Her recent works, including “JURA PUNK” and the “Shitty Barrows” series, engage with cultural landscapes shaped by imitation, confusion, and overlooked beauty.
Q: When did you first start noticing the tension between everyday design and emotional experience?
A: I still remember my childhood confusion, which, by the way, hasn’t quite ended. I played all sorts of games filled with seductively designed artifacts, magical yet functionally nonsensical. I’d confront this fascination against a dislike for utilitarian objects, coming from a pragmatic, styleless reality. From the very beginning, I loved rummaging through junk at the most forgotten flea markets, searching for answers to my urge to own eccentric, authentic objects—ones I couldn’t find in familiar drawers or regular stores.
I think that if I were growing up today, it would be easier for me to surround myself with this “beauty” without those creative searches, which proved formative for me. Back then, I couldn’t imagine being able to print my own figurine. When I started working with 3D printing, I felt that the most hidden part of my inner child had finally experienced a kind of ultimate fulfillment. But from today’s perspective, I probably wouldn’t want those possibilities and that awareness for my younger self—the illusion that you can easily arrange your surroundings in a magical way.
The longer I live, the easier it is for me to accept that, in reality, space cannot look like in "Heroes of Might and Magic" or "Skyrim". And if it does, it probably speaks more to the investor’s edifice complex or even imperial tendencies and vain desires to dominate territory with aesthetics.
The world is becoming more cramped, with less and less space for decorative temples dedicated to ephemeral matters. Despite the freedom provided by postmodernist flow, we still have to solve serious problems with the simplest solutions and most accessible tools.
Q: When did discarded objects and kitsch start to feel meaningful for you?
A: They always seemed to me like unfairly repressed pillars of reality and culture.
I observed that even the most historic, well-maintained parts of cities are surrounded by all kinds of trash and junk—stuff you don’t see in promotional photos or hear about in popular anecdotes. Pop culture and everything else aim to achieve ultimate purity and sanitation, while those qualities have long ceased to be sustainably accessible at a mass scale. We live in a world of radically misallocated resources, and that status is, to a large extent, irreversible.
I think I quickly concluded that beggars cannot be choosers. And the real choice is trash and shit. One of the wisest and most fundamental principles of rational design and space management is using local resources. The true meaning of what is vernacular and honest—therefore, something we modern people deeply crave—lies in material availability. With my art, I try to emancipate all kinds of matter of shame. I believe it is from them that “palaces” and other wonders of the future will be made.
What is kitsch—and what is not—is becoming harder and harder to distinguish, and I must admit, I’m glad about that in a societal context.
Perhaps this will protect us from elitist and class-based perceptions of our surroundings. Maybe we’ll start to think about forms in terms of their actual content and possibilities, rather than surface-level associations. Pretending that you can paint everything white and cover up all the inconvenient meanings with layers of paint is often delusional and counterproductive.
Q: You often use humor and irony—do they help you cope, or are they more a way to provoke?
A: When I’m overwhelmed by the absurd pathos of a fascist-leaning world, I tend to imagine dictators and hooligans naked, taking a dump, or in other human moments of weakness. Beneath every uniform buzzing with colorful little badges there is a little animal just like the one watching cartoons in a comfy tracksuit.
I am not trying very hard to mock every hardship of reality—it’s just that many of them are, by nature, absurdly funny to me.
Especially those tied to living in overly complicated times, in a very lost society.
But it’s true—humor effectively kills seriousness. I don’t choose it to provoke—it just happens that I myself am often treated as a joke, or even ridiculed. It would be hypocritical of me to freeze into a rigid pose—more often, I start from the position of a fool—not by choice. I often feel that only after a moment do people start taking me seriously, instead of seeing me as a clown. And beyond the fact that, for my health, I supplement my reality-commentary with laughter—I’m sincere and dead serious.
Q: What does it mean for you to turn something temporary or trashy into something sacred?
A: It’s complicated on many levels. It means accepting that there really is no such thing as trash anymore. That we no longer have the free resources to pretend otherwise. The illusion that so much can be treated as disposable is still pervasive—and it’s a disease with disastrous consequences.
People often look with disgust and superiority at those who source materials from dumpsters.
Luckily, such hopeless attitudes are slowly being replaced by more “progressive,” thoughtful actions—like building online networking of people keeping themselves informed about potentially valuable stuff surrounding dumpster areas. But I’m afraid it’s too weak a tool to deal with this whole “mess”—and so is occasional recycling, too.
We have to completely redefine these terms and reconstruct the concept of the dumpster. It has to become more social and much more valued in everyone’s eyes. But over time, we’ll most likely be forced to face the truth anyway.
On the other hand, I regularly fulfill various needs compulsively and thoughtlessly. I wish I could control it more effectively, but it’s hard while living in an overwhelming, excess-driven system focused on elusive, fetishized profit.
In my art, as in everyday life, it boils down to a kind of sensitivity I believe anyone can develop easily. Just observe the discarded things and think about their potential. In creative process, it’s an especially rewarding approach—when a messed-up object suddenly falls from the sky, it becomes for you a completely free uniqueness you were longing for, and essentially waits for your approval and intervention.
Q: "This Table Sucks" came from a kind of obsessive tension—does designing help you quiet that feeling?
A: In my experience, giving in to those tensions usually leads nowhere. If you don’t take care of what’s inside—the root of that desire for control—you’ll just keep trying to ineffectively deal with other uncontrollable processes. It’s very difficult and I don’t fully understand it myself, but thanks to creating that object I learned that frustration will appear no matter the circumstances.
While I was sulking over steel screws unevenly ripping into furniture boards, I dreamed of some unreal, soft, problem-free material that would, against physics, always obey me.
But that’s not the way. The suction cups responded to my frustrations—but their materiality brought new tensions. That project definitely helped me understand my problem from another angle, namely, that the solution lies more within me than anywhere outside. "This Table Sucks" is not a solution to those problems—but it proves that finding inner peace always takes a lot of work.
Of course, proper design can help you cope with an overstimulating environment—but it won’t replace the very process of life adaptation, since life itself is never something you can have full control of.
Q: Do you think growing up with aesthetic confusion shaped how you see beauty today?
A: Yes, I think I’d be a completely different person if I were born and raised in a place with a more predictable, unambiguous, and less multidimensional visual culture. Although it may seem totally abstract, since I am only familiar with my own perspective, and it’s hard for me to imagine a place without some form of aesthetic confusion—at least in the 20th and 21st centuries.
I think it’s this wonderfully fucked-up, loud era that’s a key factor in shaping our taste and aesthetic perception. But let’s imagine I was born in a place with a more mature pop culture, urban planning, and democracy. I just wouldn’t notice certain problems because I simply wouldn’t experience them. Here, in Poland, we’re all still culturally and economically on the rise, constantly trying to show off—even when building or designing.
My country is full of architectural gems and priceless spaces emerging from all this chaos and the rush to redefine ourselves—yet again, not for the first time in history. Polish space tells a story of incredible trauma and such immense strength that it seems to have used up a lot of our collective capacity for cooperation and social action. But I am aware that this is something which can be traced all over the world. Nowadays, it’s absolutely crucial to understand that beauty is as relative and individual as sexuality.
My whole life I longed for, say, a British-style “neatly arranged” neighborhood, where a sense of order stems from an originally designed urban plan. But today I really value living within a complex palimpsest of Polish cities. That is why I now gravitate most toward things freed from discipline of conventions, namely toward those that are oppressed, that must keep fighting for survival and emancipate themselves over and over again.
