Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

artist: Karolina Wiktor
curator: Katarzyna Kołodziej-Podsiadło
exhibition partner: Center of the Inclusive Art / Theater 21
cooperation: Iga Wiktor-Rypson, Konrad Kodras, Wiktoria Kuchta, Lidia Magiera, Irmina Mendera, Paweł Mendera, Piotr Pryk, prof. Aneta Szymaszek, Agata Wajda, dr Małgorzata Walaszczyk

How can you communicate with the world when illness renders established forms of communication impossible? How do women with disabilities experience motherhood? How do you become a mother during rehabilitation? What does it mean to ‘regain a voice’ in a world that does not recognise your language?

Karolina Wiktor addresses these questions in Cartography of Motherhood. For the first time in her practice, the artist explores the subject of motherhood from the perspective of a woman with post-stroke aphasia, addressing the issue of parenting by women with disabilities. At the heart of the exhibition’s narrative lies the relationship between a mother with aphasia and her daughter, where everyday gestures, domestic rituals, and developing new forms of communication become a form of rehabilitation in their own right. When words failed the artist, drawing, signs, gestures, rhythms and sounds emerged. Together with her daughter Iga, she created an ‘EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY OF MOTHER AND DAUGHTER’ — a space grounded in mutual learning, attentiveness and care. In the exhibition, children’s drawings act as directions on a map of motherhood, a process that Karolina Wiktor has used to regain agency and establish her place in the world.

The exhibition addresses issues of visibility and communication, as well as the developmental potential of people with neurological impairments. It is the result of over fifteen years of artistic practice, during which time resistance to the crisis of the body has served to create a new language. Wiktor presents art as a means of articulating experiences of the body and mind, as well as a way of transcending their limitations. A recurring motif in the exhibition narrative is the Czcionka Braku [Font of Absence], which the artist created during a bout of aphasia when the letters she recorded were incomplete and illegible.

The exhibition has an open structure. Its integral part consists of gestures of presence, such as actions, meetings and workshops, which enable it to function as a dynamic map of personal traces and collective experiences. Visitors also have the opportunity to engage with selected works directly through touch and drawing.

Cartography of Motherhood builds on the activities initiated by the artist at the Zachęta gallery during the Culture and Neuroscience conference in 2014, which focused on various aspects of brain function. As part of these activities, Wiktor continues to facilitate meetings within the NeuroUżyteczna [NeuroUseful] project, which aims to encourage the social participation of people with diverse abilities.

The exhibition is accompanied by books published by Zachęta: Kartografia macierzyństwa (2026) and a revised and expanded second edition of Wołgą przez Afazję (2014), which is available in the Zachęta Art Bookshop.

Karolina Wiktor — visual artist, author, and creator of the NeuroUżyteczna project, which supports people after stroke.  Recipient of the Katarzyna Kobro Award (2017).  Between 2001 and 2013, she and Aleksandra Kubiak co-created the performance duo Grupa Sędzia Główny. Following a ruptured aneurysm and strokes in 2009, her artistic path took a completely new direction. She now works with visual and concrete poetry, creating her own Font of Absence. In her work, she combines her knowledge of the brain and cognitive science with neuroscience and the experience of the viewer. She co-created the Culture and Neuroscience conference and workshops at Zachęta. In 2020, at the invitation of Fundacja Teatr 21, she created the performative film Niezbędnik Afazjanina [Aphasian Survival Kit]. She previously ran the afazja.blogspot.com blog and currently runs poezjawizualna.blogspot.com. She is the author of the books Wołgą przez Afazję [Down the Volga Through Aphasia] (2014), the graphic poem Pustostan nienawiści [The Vacancy of Hatred] (2019) and Kartografia macierzyństwa [Cartography of Motherhood] (forthcoming).