Justyna Kisielewicz: Art as Critique and Provocation

Polish artist Justyna Kisielewicz, currently based in Miami, presents Living Space, her first solo exhibition at La Cometa—a show where color, satire, and symbolism collide to question power, religion, and the excesses of contemporary culture. The exhibition opens to the public on September 13.

Living Space

Living Space constructs a powerful visual discourse on the legacy of colonialism, historical violence, and the contemporary pursuit of freedom. Kisielewicz creates an exuberant pictorial universe filled with vibrant color and layered symbolism, where ornament and allegory come together to challenge dominant narratives that have shaped global history.

In scenes teeming with iconic animals, tropical vegetation, humorous elements, and masked, opulently dressed figures, the artist delivers a sophisticated critique of patriarchal and colonial discourses that have framed our understanding of “the Other.”

In this body of work, the concept of Lebensraum—laden with references to Nazi expansionist ideology—is recontextualized to speak about memory, displacement, and reclamation. Rather than reproducing a logic of conquest, Kisielewicz turns art into an act of personal and collective reclamation, inviting the viewer to critically examine the historical structures that continue to shape our present.

Born in Warsaw in 1983, Justyna Kisielewicz is an artist who has challenged both physical and symbolic boundaries. Trained in painting and textile arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and in Political Science at the University of Warsaw, Kisielewicz left Poland in 2015 to settle in the United States, where she now develops her career from Miami.

Her move, more than just a migration, becomes a metaphor for symbolic conquest: an Eastern European artist in search of creative freedom in the heart of visual capitalism.

Coming from a country historically influenced and oppressed by neighboring colonial powers like Russia, Germany, and Austria, Kisielewicz has created a body of work that uses color and image as forms of resistance against the restrictions of the Soviet communist regime in which she was raised. In contrast to the austere, utilitarian aesthetics of that era, her work draws on historical events and embraces camp aesthetics, deliberately playing with excess and exaggeration to highlight the fictions of a past and present defined by exclusion and domination.

Through vivid colors and ornamental detail, her work unfolds primarily across textile, drawing, and painting. These techniques form the foundation for a visual universe built on recognizable references that are transformed into unexpected and provocative statements, making her work difficult to place within any single context.

Kisielewicz approaches colonialism as a mutable historical force—one that can reproduce and adapt itself to new settings. Her work embraces appropriation as a fundamental strategy, using it to challenge established norms and highlight the superficiality and excess of contemporary culture.

Kisielewicz does not shy away from uncomfortable themes such as faith, sexual freedom, or environmental collapse. In fact, one of the driving forces of her practice is a rejection of taboos inherited from having grown up in a communist and Catholic context, where the expression of desire was condemned and criticism of power suppressed.

In her most recent artist statement, she reflects on how color became her refuge from the brutalist grayness of her childhood—and how her work now seeks to create a “living space” for dialogue through difference, without hierarchizing pain or idealizing history.

Through technical sophistication and sharp irony, Justyna Kisielewicz builds a body of work that is both mirror and critique of our time. The question she raises is not only what belongs to us or what divides us, but also what we share as societies marked by history, consumption, and a need to imagine alternative futures.

• Curated by Veronica Pesantes Vallejo
• La Cometa, Miami / 1015 NW 23rd St Unit 2, Miami, FL 33127