Malwina Chabocka graduated from Central Saint Martins in London with a Bachelor degree in Theatre: Design for Performance and from Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw with a Master of Arts degree in Stage Design (degree with distinction). Ever since her London degree, she's been investigating the ideas around body, sex, and mental health, both in an artistic and academic context. For a number of years following graduation, she worked across various disciplines as an artist and designer, gradually identifying her area and language of expression. She worked as a graphic and motion designer, developed site-specific art events, picture books, graphic design for short films, and stage design for theatre and operatic productions, including “The Burial at Thebes” opera at Shakespeare’s Globe in London and “The Little Prince” musical at the Musical Theatre ROMA in Warsaw. In 2018, she returned to painting.
She has participated in solo and group shows in the UK, Portugal, Poland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Since 2022, she's been living in The Hague, where she's a member of Stroom Den Haag. She works with The Oil Art Advisory Gallery in Knutsford, UK.
Read My StoryMy Story
I loved to paint from the moment I was able to hold a crayon. Early on, I specialised in "art interventions" – I would draw princesses with oversized heads in my older sister’s notebooks when she wasn’t looking and, completely unauthorised, cover my cousin’s bedroom wall in odd creatures. My first art commission happened at the nursery when I was about 5 years old. When my parents came to pick me up, I was sitting behind a desk, with a long queue of children in front of me, waiting for me to draw them a bunny – a task I approached with the efficiency, patience and dedication of a best-selling author on a book signing tour.
I drew and painted a lot when I was a child and a teenager, but the moment I decided to actively pursue art was around the age of 17. I signed up to weekend art classes at Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, a city 6 hours away on the train, and for a year I’d spend every other weekend drawing and painting nudes and various compositions of draperies and kettles from early morning to late evening.
My formal art education began with a foundation course at Camberwell College of Arts, followed by a BA in Theatre: Design for Performance at Central Saint Martins. I had been writing and performing in amateur theatre productions throughout my teenage years, so the whimsical world of model boxes and visual storytelling felt like home.
The course, led by Michael Spencer, was like no other. We were not trained to be designers. We were taught to think independently, encouraged to develop our identity and allowed to experiment and fail with no judgement. And we learned to collaborate – to be kind, helpful and constructive with our criticism. In the ego-obsessed snobbish art world, we were developing into artists sensitive to the wide world, not enclosed in our little one.
After my Bachelor's Degree, I went to Warsaw to do my Master's Degree at Academy of Fine Arts at its most progressive department of Media Art and Stage Design led by Paweł Dobrzycki, who also supervised my MA thesis. Once again, I was lucky to be taught a professor of great vision and broad horizons, and I was granted individual training, which complemented my London education.
The excellent training I received at both Central Saint Martins and Academy of Fine Arts fired my imagination and yearning for independent expression in multiple forms. Thanks to my experiences, I was able to develop my skills and my vision with the assertiveness and courage that is often missing in the fine art world – a world riddled with conventions, trends and unhealthy hierarchies. For a few years following graduation, I worked across several disciplines, gradually identifying and forming my area and language of expression, before making painting my primary focus. I wrote two children’s books, developed site-specific art events, graphic design for short films, and stage design for theatre and operatic productions, including “The Burial at Thebes” opera at Shakespeare’s Globe in London and “The Little Prince” musical at the Musical Theatre ROMA in Warsaw. I worked with some wonderful artists and institutions, including Derek Walcott, Secret Cinema, Rich Mix, Daniel Blau, The Ceramic House, and had my works shown at various galleries and venues, including the William Morris Gallery in London.
In 2018, after my artistic and geographical adventures, which included a year in Portugal, I relocated to Poland and in 2019 I began my painting journey. It wasn't long before the coronavirus pandemic started sweeping the globe and I spent a couple of years working in isolation, in a country tormented by pandemic and political crisis. Then three years later, on New Year's Eve, I moved to the Netherlands with the intention of broadening my painting language.
Working across fields as well as cultural and geographical borders not only has broadened my horizons but has shaped the way I express myself on canvas. Like a theatrical performance, I want my paintings to move, provoke and engage the viewer. I want to inspire people to embrace our messy human selves, and celebrate the human nature with all its beauty and its ugliness.
Read my Artist StatementMe and painting
Artist statement
In my painting, I steer away from narrative and directness. I want the viewers to respond to my work on an emotional level and interpret it through the filter of their own experience and imagination.
My work focuses on humans, our psyche and soma, and is an observation of how the body and bodily instincts both express and facilitate the emotional and cognitive evolution that happens continuously in one’s life. I am fascinated by the human mind, emotions and everything we don’t express and admit not just to others, but also to ourselves. I am inspired by the neuroscientific research on feelings being the direct perception of the internal state of the body and Freudian theory of the ego being derived from bodily sensations as well as being a representative of the mind.
Human sexuality, being one of the fundamental drives behind everyone’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviours, has been an area of particular interest and exploration for me both in the artistic and academic context (I wrote my BA thesis on fetishism and then later my MA thesis on masochism as a creative force for artists). What has heavily shaped my work in this context was the experience of living in London, where I was immersed in the alternative adult scene and frequented fetish clubs as well as alternative live art events.
In my painting, I also draw from my experience of working in physical theatre and performance, where the body expresses a story in itself. Hidden desires, repressed feelings, haunting memories, shame, pain and longing; passions and needs which escape socially accepted norms and fight for their reason to exist -- I like to observe how all these secret inner tales make their way into flesh, and subsequently onto my canvas. I am drawn to the intersection of the rational mind with the most primary instincts, which we are so unsuccessfully trying to curb. Through my work, I am inviting the viewers to explore the nooks of their mind and embrace the complexity of our psychophysical existence.
My painting process is an overlap between accident and control. I work from sketches and photographs, which serve both as points of reference and triggers of ideas. I don’t do realism nor aim for a perfect picture. I like the rough edges.
The way I see it, painting is an act of putting paint onto canvas through instinct, intention and accident. It’s about finding the balance between exercising control and letting go. Painting is not about manufacturing a best-selling product embellished with marketable slogans and trending hashtags. It’s a lifelong process of exploration and experimentation.
I believe art can allow us to look at ourselves through a new lens, and help us reconnect with the vulnerable side of our human being. It’s a place of reconnection, to ourselves and to others, and of expanding our notion of “we”.
Exhibitions & projects
Solo Exhibitions
2024, Twists & Turns, The Oil Art Advisory Gallery, Knutsford, UK
2023, Little Obsessions, Ancien Cinema, Luxembourg
2020, Intimacy, CU46 Project, Barcelona, Spain (online)
2019, Lisboetas, The Portuguese Embassy in Warsaw, Poland
2018, Holding In / Reaching Out, Tati, Lisbon, Portugal
2018, Lisboetas, Photo Eat Galeria, Amadora, Portugal
2014, The Hour of the King - Stories of the Lost, Gasoline Rooms, London, UK
2011, Painting, Scenography, and..., Museum of History of Kielce, Kielce, Poland
Group exhibitions
2024, Rise, Aedra Fine Arts, New Jersey, US (online exhibition)
2024, VI International Biennale of Fine Art Nude “Marko Krstov Gregović”, Montenegro
2023, Manchester Art Fair, United Kingdom
2023, Kunstbeurs Heemstede, Netherlands
2023, Gestalten, KV2, The Hague, Netherlands
2021, The Self-Portrait Prize 2021, Ruth Borchard Collection, London, United Kingdom (online)
2017, Abertura des Ateliês de Artistas, Espaço 62, Lisbon, Portugal
2017, 12x12, Galeria Arte Graça, Lisbon, Portugal
2013, The Makers, William Morris Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2013, Dazed and Refused, The Arch Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2012, Sophiscapes, Klub Studio, Kraków, Poland
2012, Dazed and Refused, The Arch Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2011, Coming Out, Sinfonia Varsovia, Warsaw, Poland
Residencies
2012, Protégé, London, United Kingdom
Theatre and art projects
2020-2021 Akt Kalender, Berlin
2019, Fly on the windscreen animation project, London / Warsaw
2012, Unpredict-a-ball, Rich Mix, London
2012, Tales of Tiles, The Ceramic House, Brighton, United Kingdom
2011, Shrek, The Musical Theatre in Gdynia, Poland
2010, The Little Prince, The Musical Theatre ROMA, Warsaw, Poland
2010, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Theatre Academy, Warsaw, Poland
2009, Brooklyn, The Cock Tavern Theatre, London, United Kingdom
2008, Burial at Thebes Opera, Shakespeare’s Globe, London, United Kingdom
2008, Hamlet Opera, The Cochrane Theatre, London, United Kingdom
2007, The Crocodile Opera, Arcola Theatre, London, United Kingdom