(manuscript, 2 XI 1993. The text was published in the exhibition catalog: Maria Pinińska-Bereś 1931-1999, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, Kraków 1999)

Dear X!

I was at a women’s symposium in Vienna. Artists and theoreticians participated. We were acquainted with the achievements of women’s art of the period of maturity in self-consciousness.

And so artistic facts appear in the 1970s, the 1960s are the beginnings of the women’s movement (the third wave). We marvelled at the bronzed works and the names of the female scene. And here I felt something strange, and started to count.

My Tables with elements of a woman’s body as a dish to be eaten appear in 1968. The standard work of the movement, Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party is dated 1974 —1979! In 1980 A. Kostołowski wrote that I have overtaken with my art the achievements of western alternative enclaves (female attitudes in creativity). I did not want to really believe him then. Today I see that crucial, with me was the opening of “the reservoir with femininity” and hence the form of result from fan le activity, experiences resulting from the female option, unrevealed, ashamedly hidden, hushed up.

Form was, and remains, the most important Essential was reaching out for a woman’s way formulating a work of art. Out of sewn cloth, stuffed, shaped. There arises soft sculpture. Painted pink. And the pink standard is the standard of femininity, so far dismissed.

And all this after perfect sculpture stun under X Dunikowski. How strong was the determination. Today my art has an existential dimension. That through my art I have become freer and stronger. I liberated myself!

I wanted to add that this path has its beginnings in the mid 1960s. It was then that Corsets came about.

In some old bits-and-bobs I found a pair rulers which I today consider to have been a directing sign:

Real Corsets

Mental Corsets

Through the centuries accompany a woman

Limiting

Deforming

the body, psyche

bodies go

pass

corsets remain

granny’s corset

great grandmother’s

great great grandmother’s

the cages of young bodies

the cages of burning hearts

the cages of mind

imagination

through the centuries of imprisonment

the corset cry — from the shadows

1965

Yours M.

XI 1993

translated by “Inter-text Translation”