JULIA BOSSKI PRZYBORA [JB]
IN CONVERSATION
WITH
KATARZYNA ZAWADZKA [KZ]
I know many beautiful women, but the raw, pure beauty of Kasia Zawadzka hits
rarely like this .
It only takes a few seconds to spot it.
This beauty radiates and you can enjoy it.
You lose yourself when you start to discover this beauty, slowly.
You may only discover it, when you step outside the box of superficiality.
Kasia found me thanks to my „Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Kilku” cultural parties I organize regularly in Warsaw.
She heard from someone of it and liked what I was doing so she wanted to meet me.
Surprisingly, I didn’t know who she was, but I felt immediately infatuated by her aura.
First, we shared our fascination with each other in instagram salons, commenting on each other’s beauty.
Then we wrote each other private letters, and finally we met personally at one of my parties.
When I first visited Kasia in her charming apartment, she accepted me with
extraordinary hospitality and I will never forget how she cooked buckwheat for me in
one of her extra outfits , standing in snakeskin heels (Kasia is famous for her great
taste).
After a few talks together I got to the conclusion that everyone should know at least a little bit of her sensitivity and listen to her inner beauty, her wisdom.
The power of solidarity among women is something that was lacking in this country and now we can see how powerful it can be.
PS. There may be a few mistakes in the english version, as we were talking in polish, but we do like mistakes anyway, so we hope you enjoy it as it is.
JB: Roles change.
Women don’t allow themselves to do certain things anymore.
KZ: The way women have been and are treated over the last hundreds of years cannot be changed right away.
Marriages were often entered by force and women used to be practically enslaved.
There have been a few „heroins” that have tried to fight for equality, but only for the past 100 years or so
something is actually starting to slowly change. This is shown, for example, by the protests that are happening in Poland.
JB: One of my beloved , idol women is Peggy Guggenheim, art collector,
she was the one who first showed i.a. Pollock, helped hundreds of the greatest artists of the time.
She was an incredibly strong, imperious woman, she was a billionaire.
Despite this, men defined her life, often treated her terribly, they married her for
money, they were physically abusing her, and she felt that it had to be that way.
Without a man, a woman was not complete, not only in social spheres. She wasn’t complete
„legally”. Unmarried women were often unable to inherit or dispose of property.
Now things are starting to be different. We become completely independent. We have our money, we can leave at any moment.
KZ: The social framework used to be terribly strong. There are still certain social frames. Women of my generation
are still often forced to get married and start a family at a certain age.
I come from a smaller town.
Traditions are deeply rooted in my family. After graduating from high school, you go to college,
then you should already have a boyfriend, and before 30, it’s seen best to get married.
At the age of 20, I tried to go the same way as everyone else. At one point, I said
stop, I felt that I wanted to go beyond this framework, change my direction. Do things according to what
I really feel ..
It enriched my life, but it also took away this element of „stabilization.” I have met many times
with comments from my family “Why didn’t you come with your boyfriend? And when are the children?
The questions sounded like allegations, I felt terrible.
It is important to me to have a family. But I believe you don’t have to put it on while being too
young. I think that people in their 20s are not mature yet, they don’t know what they want. Well
is to treat life as an experimental space. The more experiences the better.
At some point, when you’re a little older and know more about life, it’s nice to meet
someone who thinks similar to us and then try to create a nice, mature relationship based on
partnership.
JB: So , tell me! What is LOVE ?
KZ: I will repeat after Albert Einstein .. It is an elusive, unknown energy that
surrounds, which constitutes the whole universe and thanks to this energy beautiful, unique,
unprecedented things that give people wings.
This energy make people want to live and create. It is a kind of creative energy. I’m not just talking about male-female relationships.
Love as a feeling cannot be defined. Almost all art is devoted to the attempt of defining that feeling. Songs, poems and books are written about love.
Love drives us to action ..
I have already experienced various loves … healthy and unhealthy. Every experience is important because
it causes development on many levels of life.
And whether it is a female-male relationship or a love to art, to
animals, children, profession, everything you do for love is beautiful and noticeable,
leaves traces of itself.
I was brought up with a mythical view of love, my father was always interested
philosophical issues and for the first time I encountered the concept of love when I heard it
on the „Feast” of Plato.
For a long time I believed that love means two halves . That the other half must be found.
Often this is how I approached love, I’ve given love a surreal,
mythical, metaphysical meaning. In retrospect, I know that such an approach may
often cause failure. It is worth keeping distance and rationalism.
However, I perceive love in art differently. Notice, that most of the works that are dedicated
to love, have the greatest strength.
Often when I was doing something and I thought that I was doing it for a specific person, it gave me great power to create.
JB: Some time ago I read about a Japanese scientist who said that work drives him like this
as if he is in love permanently, he is euphoric with each new project.
This in turn keeps him happy and fulfilled, he does not look for other incentives to „get high”.
I have to admit I have had the same feeling lately, already for quite some time.
All my work, music, writing, producing photo shoots or modelling , all this gives me a sense of fulfillment, and therefore real self-love.
I’m no longer looking for the external stimulation, like falling in love..like passionate sex … It’s cool when it happens, but I don’t follow it anymore, just like
I did it when I was younger ..
Lots of people don’t have that passion and they are constantly looking for „artificial excitement” or
in our time constantly sitting on tinder or other social media, dreaming of a prince or princess who will give them meaning in life.
It seems to me that the love that has been promoted so far is overrated. And still this
more romanticized, sexualized in movies, books, series ..
KZ: Each of us has desires for such rapture, ecstasy and we sometimes even crave that suffering from love.
Who wouldn’t want to experience excruciating love like Dostoyevsky?
That love that we experience by every particle of body and soul.
Then even suffering is in some sense ecstasy, and
this suffering is sublime and creative.
During the drama school period, I had such phase that I really wanted to bear such feelings.
I wanted to learn to operate with various emotions, to have more knowledge about people.
The fact that I got into the drama school itself gave me this kind of a feeling
what being in love is.
I felt like I was floating above the ground.
People asked me if I was in love, I was blooming.
JB: I am in this moment when all my projects are actually happening and they constantly develop.
Ecstatic love does not interest me anymore, although yes, sometimes I do miss physical ecstasy and
proximity.
But let me tell you that such love ecstasies with men, maybe because I’ve already
experienced such things too many times.. they fill me rather with aversion and fear, especially when
that sublime and joyful ecstasy turns into a low, obsessive desire and suffering.
It often leads to collapse.
KZ: I don’t think I ever had it. I have never determined my life with such feelings. Intuitively
I felt it wouldn’t be good for me. Maybe it depends on how I was raised.
I had an idealized image of the relationship and believed in two perfectly matched souls.
My first love experiences were very beautiful, I did see a family path in my life
at some point .
My relationships were based on closeness and partnership. I did have a feeling of finding that platonic particle.
JB: I have never had that relationship pattern as something peaceful. When my parents
got separated, my brother and I had a combination of Almodóvar and Woody Allen films at home.
Despite this, my mother always gave me a lot of love and the feeling that I was loved. Thanks to her
I know what love is, but for sure I’ve never had a „stable”
peaceful relationship, and probably I won’t have such for a long time.
I perceive love not through sex, but through trust, closeness and
friendship. I know that I can love a man as much as I can love a woman.
I can love a few men and sleep with a few.
I don’t feel like possessing someone.
I never want to limit anyone because I don’t want to be limited nor controlled myself.
KZ: I have always had a very stable „moral backbone”, I had boundaries,
which sometimes even annoyed me because I couldn’t afford some, maybe
even more interesting raptures. I was withdrawing or not getting into situations at all
that I felt they were dangerous in such a mad whirlwind that you talk about.
When I was a younger girl, I was very attracted to French bohemia and decadence.
I read books about it, I also wanted such a life.
When I walked away from my quiet life and I split up with my fiancé , I’ve experienced a little bit of that bohemian life.
I ran out into the wild world, I’ve had various adventures and romances, but I felt it wasn’t for me.
Now I am looking for stability and partnership.
JB: Do you feel like you’re missing a relationship?
KZ: No. I like to live alone.
I don’t want any relationship by force. I know what I want and what I don’t want.
Time to be alone with yourself is very much needed to avoid stepping into random relationships.
Only then you can get to know yourself and have a chance to meet someone suitable, with
whom it’s possible to build a mature relationship.
JB: I have only recently started to get to know and accept myself.
I don’t pretend to be that femme fatale anymore
that everyone thinks I am. Probably many men think the same of you too.
People see our attractive superficiality and strength, but they do not see our sensitivity and fragility.
I no longer pretend that everything flows over me and that I have a heart of stone.
And to be honest, I started attracting a little bit different people than even at the beginning of last year.
KZ: It is very interesting what images men have when they see us.
When men come into contact with us, it suddenly turns out that they are dealing with everything-
a real person, not only a picture they have created in their heads. They start to see that we’re all filled with weaknesses, fragility,
uncertainty.
Men are no longer warriors as they were perceived to be for hundreds of years.
They too carry a lot of childhood hurt, wrong models in which were brought up. They are in a very poor mental condition.
I have tenderness and a kind of compassion for this, but when two hurt people meet,
let’s not pretend we are different.
Let’s learn to talk about it, otherwise we won’t help ourselves or anyone else.
JB: Each of us has childhood traumas and we have some suffering within us, we have to
accept and try to talk openly about it. It is not anything embarrassing or taboo.
KZ: Acting gives me a great opportunity to experience various emotions and become
situations that I have never experienced myself. This makes it easier for me to understand other
people.
JB: Well, I often wonder how the actors play various horrible roles, full of
violence, or madness. I was so impressed with your playing in Banksters,
I haven never seen you on the screen before.
How did you even manage to play such a hostile character, an extremely negative human?
KZ: I MAY HAVE A MONSTER IN ME (laughs) .
Like everyone else!
I am certain that you could play it too. You have to go into your dark nooks and crannies and remember moments when you were terribly angry with yourself or someone else, or disappointed with someone.
You collect such emotions from your treasury, throw them into a cauldron and create such emotional mixture
… and you bring that aspect out of you.
The subject of human multidimensionality has always been close to me, I have never pretended that some emotions have tarnished me.
At the drama school or when I danced in a folk group, everyone said I’m not able to hide what I feel. Maybe that’s why I find it easy to act any, even these , the most difficult emotions, because I never suffocate them in me and I can recognize them.
JB: Who is a modern woman for you? Can you identify as a modern woman?
KZ: Yes. I am a modern woman.
It’s not that I don’t think we need men at all, but we do
need to create this reality for ourselves where we no longer define our lives through
men ..
Women are strong, they are brave because they have to be brave.
Men fascinate me but as a modern woman, I want old fashioned system to bel changed.
I do not agree to that pattern in which our parents functioned- being together just for being, as long as not to be alone.
I am a modern woman because I want partnership.
I havel very strongly embedded femininity, although my relationships with women have not always been
easy.
The more mature I am, I know that honesty is the key to any good relationship.
Sometimes I was hurt more by finishing of relationships with my girlfriends, than those with my ex- partners.
That’s why the more I feel loyal to myself, the more I feel the need of being fair to other women.
It is an extremely important issue.
I think women lack platforms for open conversations, we correct ourselves often, we don’t talk honestly about feelings, we are ashamed in front of each other, we feel a sense of danger in other women.
I believe women must gather together, especially now. Demonstrate to our love and solidarity.
For me, love is followed by solidarity and loyalty.
These are the most important foundations for a relationship.
We are experiencing a turning point now, I know it.
We all must be strong and brave.
We have to fight for our rights.
We should return to original solidarity and stop paying attention to these fears and shame and
unite to become a beautiful community and create a better world together.
© All photographs by Kuba Lysiak for Bossque
