Zachęta Project Room

curator: Magda Kardasz
cooperation: Pola Gadowska

A horizontal landscape. In the foreground, a woman is turned away, gazing at a mountain panorama. Her figure is frozen in stillness, but her long skirt flutters in the wind while clouds rush swiftly across the sky. Her silhouette begins to fade until it merges completely with the shape of the tree in front of her. Moments later, the figure reappears. The viewer realises that the image has changed: the mountains in the background are higher and more rugged, and gazing at them is a woman who appears both similar and different. Once again, she is motionless, her skirt tossed by the wind as the clouds sweep dramatically before her eyes and ours. At one point, her silhouette dissolves into the tree in front of her and then sharpens again. This sequence of events loops in an endless rhythm of transformation.

The latest film by Katarzyna Depta-Garapich, created for the exhibition at the Zachęta Project Room, is also called Feral — the same as the exhibition and the new works presented in it. The artist seems to speak of the power of nature, where the roles of humans, animals and plants are equal and interspecies transformation is possible. She highlights the ‘wild’ side of humanity and its unity with nature. the film can also be interpreted as a metaphor for human adaptability and the unleashing of wild/primal traits in the struggle for survival. Or perhaps it is simply a story about the therapeutic powers of nature.

A family theme — so important in Depta-Garapich’s work — emerges here, too: the artist’s sister poses in the landscapes of the Low Beskids, where she lives, and the artist herself is shown against the backdrop of the beloved Tatra Mountains. The sister transforms into a tree, then back into herself, and then into her sister again — an endless intertwining of family affinities. The film evokes the paintings of the German Romanticist Caspar David Friedrich, with wanderers gazing at majestic landscapes, and in particular Woman before the Setting Sun (c. 1818–1824) from the Museum Folkwang in Essen. In this rare instance for Friedrich, the protagonist is a woman. The work is often interpreted in eschatological terms as a metaphor for life’s journey, symbolising the inevitability of death and the hope of resurrection. (Some scholars suggest that the model was the artist’s wife and that the painting was created shortly after the death of their child.) The composition may also be understood as an attempt to capture a state of rapture and a sense of unity between humanity and nature.

As part of the Feral project for the exhibition at the Zachęta Project Room, the artist also created a human-animal costume in the form of a feathered dress reminiscent of those worn by the film’s heroines. Visitors entering the gallery are greeted by a newly premiered bronze sculpture entitled Feral, in the form of branches arranged in a line along the wall, as if guiding them through the exhibition. The attentive viewer will notice that the branches end in claws resembling a bear’s, as well as a form resembling a human finger. This is a sculptural interpretation of the previously mentioned narratives that have recently fascinated Depta-Garapich: the transformation of humans into other species — here, into animals and plants. This sculpture is complemented by two earlier pieces: Trophy (2022) and Feet (2023), which are beautiful, almost jewel-like bronze casts of the artist’s hands and feet. The added claws and fragments of fur create a disturbing effect and the uncanny sensation that human–animal hybrids often provoke.

The artist works through projects. Attracted by her chosen theme, she conducts research and collects materials and stories, which she later uses in artistic projects or translates into works of art, creating intriguing multimedia narratives. She draws inspiration from family histories, her own childhood, her relationship with her parents, the passage of time, loss and growing up. This was the subject of the Family Album cycle (2021–2022), fragments of which are shown in the exhibition. Consisting of drawn interventions on black-and-white photographs from the 1970s depicting holiday scenes in the Tatras, it portrays the young Kasia being cared for by her mother, who is transformed by the artist’s hand into a white she-bear.

Another significant theme recently explored by Katarzyna Depta-Garapich concerns the social expectations faced by women. She sheds light on the stories of creative women omitted from history. Zakopane inspires her with its blend of Young Poland (Młoda Polska) cultural traditions, the majestic beauty of the mountain landscape and contemporary kitsch. These two themes converge in the cycle Feral Woman (2025), which features drawn interventions on archival photographs from the Tatra Museum’s collection in Zakopane. The original images, portraying members of Zakopane’s early twentieth-century bohemia alongside local highland men and women, were by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Jan Koszczyc Witkiewicz, and Eugeniusz Stercula. Depta-Garapich selects photographs depicting women and subjects them to ‘wilding’ interventions, such as drawing in hair and fur or adding wings. In doing so, she also restores the memory of the sculptor Maria ‘Dziudzia’ Witkiewicz and the composer Helena Biedrzycka, and highlights the work of anonymous highland women.

The exhibition tells the vivid story of the liberating power of feralness and the value of interspecies interaction and closeness, to the point where boundaries are erased or metamorphosis occurs. It is also a story of the strength of women — yesterday and today — seeking their own feral path amidst social and psychological constraints. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the transformation of nymphs and goddesses into animals was a punishment. However, the transformation of Katarzyna Depta-Garapich’s heroines carries a liberating power.

Magda Kardasz

Katarzyna Depta-Garapich lives and works in Kraków and London. She graduated in Art History from Jagiellonian University in 1999 and in Sculpture from Wimbledon College of Art in 2010 and the London Slade School of Fine Art in 2012. In 2023, she was a Gessel Foundation Fellow at Zachęta — National Gallery of Art. In 2025, she obtained her doctoral degree from the Slade School of Fine Art. She creates objects, drawings and video works, bringing her sculptural experience into the field of performance.

Individual exhibitions:

2025 Feral Woman, Tatra Museum, Zakopane
2023 Excursion, Watermans Art Centre, London
Claw, Galeria Kuns(z)t, Goethe Institut, Kraków
Mothers!, with Małgorzata Markiewicz, Ośrodek Dokumentacji Sztuki Tadeusza Kantora Cricoteka, Kraków
. . . you ate three hundred devils #2, with Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Galeria Skala, Poznań
2022 . . .you ate three hundred devils #1, with Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Galeria Władysława Hasiora, Tatra Museum, Zakopane
2019 Handiwork, with Małgorzata Markiewicz, Galeria Władysława Hasiora, Tatra Museum, Zakopane

Group exhibitions:
2024 Ferment, CU AT SADKA, Kraków
2023 Now Introducing, Studio West Gallery, London
A Body A Part, APT Gallery, London
2022 Objects of the Misanthropocene, University College London