Can Red Be Trusted

For her exhibition at Ujazdowski Castle, Róża Litwa has created new works that develop themes long present in her practice: reflections on the human condition and human feelings, on being with others and on a reality that is changing at speed.

Trust, as announced in the title, is the leading theme. What does it mean to place one’s trust – in systems, in other people, in oneself – when everything around us seems ever more blurred, fragile and uncertain?

Róża Litwa’s paintings, spatial works and animations invite reflection on the individual and social dimensions of trust. At a time when distrust in institutions is growing and digital media puncture the contours of the familiar world, calling our sense of reality into question, art – thanks to its expressive power and resistance to all kinds of simplifications – allows articulating these mounting anxieties with true acuity.

The artist has developed a distinctive visual language built on minimalist, timeless metaphors, symbols and signs. Through motifs that are instantly recognisable and at the same time rich in ambiguity, Róża Litwa gives voice to the full range of experiences and emotions that shape people today. In doing so, she brings autobiographical threads together with a broader, systemic and sociological reflection. A perceptive and sensitive observer, the artist points to literature as one of her most important inspirations, the one that sets her entire creative process in motion. It comes as no surprise, then, that the red of the title alludes to Anne Carson’s verse novel Autobiography of Red.