Obrazy nestability. Maľba ako afektívna geografia neskorej transformácie
Images of Instability. Painting as an Affective Geography of Late Transformation

Summary/Abstract: This study offers a theoretical analysis of contemporary painting in Poland as a site for the production and negotiation of social affect within the framework of post-1989 systemic transformation. It examines how painting participates in constructing and contesting collective imaginaries of identity, community, and failure, approaching it not as a nostalgic return to medium-specificity but as a displaced practice of affective reflection and radical introspection emerging under the accelerated conditions of crisis. Rather than emphasizing formal analysis, painting is understood as a practice of testimony and existential registration—a means of articulating experiences that elude the discourses of politics and economics, yet remain embedded in everyday life under late capitalism and the deferred promises of transformation. Situated within the broader context of Central and Eastern Europe, the essay argues that contemporary painting registers dissociation, exhaustion, and melancholic resistance not as symptoms but as political forces shaped by lived experience, revealing its potential to operate beyond representation toward an expanded politics of presence marked by memory and unrealised futures.

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