The exhibition addresses two interwoven threads. The ordeal by water was a cruel evidentiary practice used in witch trials during the era of witch hunts. It was a paradoxical act with no just resolution. The accused woman was bound and thrown into water—if she sank, she was considered innocent; if she floated, she was declared a witch and subjected to further torture. The ordeal was based on the belief that pure water would reject the one who had committed a crime.
The set of classical cut-out collages becomes an ironic attempt to speak about the aesthetic canons imposed on women today. They function as meaningful compositions that subject this image to symbolic destruction. At the same time, they confront media-driven models of femininity—idealized patterns, versions, and variations: generated, flawless, and unbearably beautiful.
Agnieszka Błędowska graduated from the State Higher School of Fine Arts (PWSP/UAP) in Poznań, where she studied Graphic Arts between 1988 and 1993. From 1993 to 2020, she worked as a lecturer and assistant professor in Zielona Góra, Poznań, Głogów, and Szczecin, teaching across a broad spectrum of visual arts disciplines and earning successive academic degrees. At the same time, she actively pursued numerous individual artistic projects, participating in group exhibitions and workshop-based initiatives.
In her artistic practice, she engages with themes drawn from contemporary reality, seeking the most adequate form for each. Object, collage, game, photography, print, drawing. Since 2021, she has run a Painting and Drawing Studio for Adults, and since 2023 she has led Tapestry Workshops at the Centrum Kultury ZAMEK in Poznań.
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