Malgosia Jankowska's delicate drawings appear to be beautiful natural landscapes at first sight, or magical forest landscapes, which invite us almost magically to linger. Radiating, the sun glistens through the branches of the trees, the snow on them glittering in the bright light. In some of the images, there are human figures in the middle of these forests, mostly children and wild animals. They fit into the nature of the forest, interact with it, build cottages from branches, play with stones, gather mushrooms. They often seem preoccupied with themselves and appear to be familiar with each other. Everything looks peaceful, even innocent.
However, appearances are deceptive. On closer inspection, in a longer stay in these abandoned forests, a feeling of loneliness sneaks in. As if the forest developed a kind of independent existence, as if a threatening whisper of nature rose, drawing attention to its power and fabulous mysticism. Malgosia Jankowska plays with precisely this symbolic ambivalence of the forest, which essentially bears something ambiguous in itself. May it be in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, in which, as a place of change, it embodies the uncertainties that can be felt both menacingly and promisingly, or as quite a real place hidden in the thicket of strangeness, danger, savage and at the same time a place of security and retreat.
Malgosia Jankowska was born in 1978 in Sochaczew / Poland. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Since 2001, she lives and works in Berlin.