Magdalena Kwapisz Grabowska

A doll
eine PUPPE
Lalka

The Dolls series grew out of my need to confront a figure that has accompanied humanity for centuries -  at times as a toy, at times as an object of worship, and at others as a projection of my desires and fears. In my works, the doll is neither an object nor a prop. It becomes a being suspended between image and memory, between corporeality and sign. I treat the doll as an archetype: a trace of the human in its most fragile, motionless, uncertain form. The doll is a body that cannot move on its own, and yet in my paintings it gains its own internal dynamism. It emerges gradually - like a memory that is not yet ready to reveal itself fully. It is captured mid-gesture, mid-existence, in a state of inert readiness. n my practice, the doll is not sentimental. It is rather a figure of tension: between animation and stillness, between delicacy and unease. Its silhouette - sometimes almost empty, barely sketched; at other times denser, more material - carries echoes of earlier representations: nineteenth-century porcelain dolls, Newton’s fragmentary mannequins, Bellmer’s unlaced forms, or the intimate, unsettling bodies in Araki’s work. And yet my paintings do not repeat their language. They construct their own subtle vocabulary of presence, built on silence, gesture, and emotional penumbra.
I work with a deliberate sparseness of means, which functions like heightened sensitivity.
Raw canvas beiges, matte blacks, the faint transparency of light - all become a stage for figures that are more posed as questions than defined. The figure appears as a phantom, a projection, as something that persists without being fully described. This incompleteness is not a lack - it is a strategy. What remains unspoken becomes a space for the viewer.
The Dolls series examines the threshold between object and being. I ask what a body becomes when deprived of its voice; what memory is when it loses its sharpness; what figure can exist only as a sign. Here the doll becomes both a symbol and a confidante -
fragile, defenseless, yet intensely present.
It is a story about delicacy that can be strong.
About silence that can speak.
About figures that endure at the edge of disappearance - and in that very edge, find their truth.

Porcelain Dolls
The history of dolls dates back centuries before Christ. Early examples, found in ancient girls’ tombs, were made of clay or wood, featuring articulated limbs and realistic features; they served both as toys and cult objects - dedicated to deities before marriage or buried with the deceased.
Few survived due to perishable materials like fabric, bone, fur, and leaves, though some are preserved in archaeological museums.
In the Middle Ages, dolls depicted saints, clergy, Jesus, or Mary to bring children closer to Christ. Like voodoo, they were believed to harm others or protect against curses - “holy dolls” safeguarded homes.
Santos and santons - wooden or wax figures - guarded family altars in rural Italy, Portugal, and Spain; French clay santons still depict nativity scene characters.
From the late 16th century, secular dolls emerged. The 18th-19th centuries saw mass-produced wax and wooden dolls like the articulated Peg from Val Gardena, popular into the 1900s.
The 20th century brought revolution: wax, papier-mâché, porcelain, and bisque faces in fashionable clothes; celluloid babies in the 1930s; hard plastic and vinyl in the 1950s, including Barbie by Ruth Handler.
Today, dolls range from children’s toys to collectibles- vintage European, pre-war Polish PRL, regional souvenirs, theatrical puppets, and artistic pieces for adults.

Hans Bellmer 
Bellmer’s works such as La poupée / The Doll and La toupie / The Spinning Top are neither tender nor sweet.
They provoke through their eroticism, while simultaneously repelling the viewer with their sexually and physically exaggerated monstrosity, as well as the inherent violence and brutality within them. For Bellmer, they - as well as himself - are both perpetrators and victims at once. Over time, the dolls became more mechanical, artificial, and complex in their construction, as seen in La demi-poupée

La poupée 

Helmut Newton
Newton’s mannequins are bold provocations: dismembered limbs, glossy surfaces, fashion twisted into erotic power plays. They inspired my own fragmented anatomies, where the body becomes architecture - cold, commanding, yet erotically charged with withheld narrative.

Nobuyoshi Araki
Araki’s photographs revel in bound kinbaku bodies and intimate decay, blending tenderness with obsession. His “unsettling bodies” inform my emotional penumbra - the soft, shadowed edges where vulnerability meets voyeurism, refusing resolution.

VooDoo

Voodoo dolls have long lived in the collective imagination as objects that evoke unease. Associated with magic, control, and the darker sides of human intention, they have been reduced by popular culture to instruments of fear. Yet their original meaning was entirely different.
Rooted in traditions such as those of New Orleans, these dolls were never meant to harm, but to protect, guide, and bring luck. Made from fragments of fabric, threads, yarn, and small personal materials, they were gestures of care and attention. Each one carried an intention - of protection, luck, healing. They were close to people, created from what was available and everyday, which gave them something deeply intimate and authentic.
My dolls return to this origin. I restore the meaning that has been distorted by simplified narratives. I create them as carriers of goodness - objects meant to support rather than harm.
At the same time, I do not shy away from their ambivalent nature. They are somewhat unsettling, sometimes even frightening. But it is precisely within this contradiction that their strength lies. What provokes a slight fear draws attention and makes us pause. And beneath the surface, one can discover something entirely different - tenderness, protection, intention.
My dolls exist on a threshold: between beauty and unease, between the familiar and the rejected. They are a reminder that not everything that appears threatening carries danger. Sometimes, that is exactly where goodness resides.

New Orleans dolls

Voodoo in New Orleans originated from West African spiritual traditions brought by enslaved people, blending with Catholicism and Haitian influences after the 1791 revolution. Marie Laveau, the famed “Voodoo Queen,” popularized its protective rituals in the 19th century. Today, it’s a syncretic practice of healing and community, far from pop culture’s dark stereotypes.