Ewelina Skowronska

逸文 (itsubun) - unknown or partly lost piece of writing, a sentence that has been lost and cannot be transmitted anymore.

The self is as puzzling concept as mental, mind, and consciousness, however we all are sure that we have our own distinctive self. But is it really ours? Created during our live through deliberated choices? Or maybe there are also different pieces, the remains that influence who we are?

Reading fragments of poems written by Sappho, the earliest and most famous Greek woman poet, living and creating around 600 BCE on the island of Lesbos, make me wonder about what is absent and what is present in the idea of self. Out of around 10,000 lines of Sappho poetry only 2 full poems survived, the rest what we have access today is just fragments. Small pieces of text, the unknowns, missing gaps … but also an opportunity for new personal interpretations.

“逸文”  is a new body of work created mostly during artist residency at Shirakino Art Village in Nagasaki, early in 2020. The series, inspired by fragments of Sappho - lyrics depicting feminine beauty, desire and rejecting the world of masculine warfare -  explores issues connected with gender, identity, and sexuality. Drawing from personal experience, Ewelina Skowronska touches subjects connected with the experience of living within the body, and the ways gender and sexuality intersect to form complex identities. Much is left to the imagination while working with the fragments of Sappho however, thinking about language, as being both shared and personal, what are the new meanings and connections we could take for ourselves? Especially now, during such an uneasy time with an uncertain future. 

MINA-TO Gallery, Spiral, Tokyo