"In Search of Presence" - Available at the Dublin Art Book Fair 2025 /  by Dorota Borowa

I’m super excited that the book from my exhibition ‘In Search of Presence’ in Poland, published by Slendzinski Gallery will be available at the Dublin Art Book Fair this year.

The 96-page catalogue presents full spreads of my installation, close-ups, and detailed documentation of all works. It features an essay by James Merrigan, “The Long Pauses of Dorota Borowa,” which explores writing alongside an artist’s practice rather than in direct confrontation; my own text “River Portrait” (an invitation to draw); work descriptions; and a selection of quotes, including those from Roni Horn and Juhani Pallasmaa.

Design, typography, layout, and photo editing: Ewa Pietruszko
Photography: Kamila Dabrowska & Ewa Pietruszko
Text: English + Polish

It’s a catalogue I had the great pleasure of collaborating on with Ewa Pietruszko.
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Thank you to the staff of Slendzinski Gallery: to Katarzyna Siwerska, the curator of the show, and to Ewa Pietruszko for bringing this project to life as well as Dawid Bujno and Anna Alimowska for their help.
Many thanks to James Merrigan for writing such a beautiful and thought-provoking essay.

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Dublin Art Book Fair (DABF) is Ireland’s leading art book fair and a centre for contemporary artist books annually produced by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. It features limited edition books made by artists, designers and independent publishers which can be browsed or bought. Over the ten-day run, DABF produces a free programme of artist workshops, art commissions, book launches, tours, and talks in celebration of the artist book, publishing and artist-run culture.

DABF runs 04–14 December 2025 at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios!

In 2025, DABF is guest curated by Dr. Selina Guinness, her theme is Flock. Through a selection of talks and nominated books, Guinness examines all things pastoral: humans and beasts; the relational art of shepherding; and the impact of flocks on habitats.


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Studio Exhibition at Uillinn West Cork Arts Center, Skibbereen /  by Dorota Borowa

A huge thank you to everyone who joined me at my studio exhibition on the final day of my residency at Uillinn West Cork Arts Center. I was truly moved by all the responses and loved every conversation. I’m deeply grateful to West Cork Arts Center for this opportunity, which provided incredible support and gave me the space and time to reflect on my practice and explore pathways I had never taken before.

Here are a few quotes that accompanied me on my journey of creating this installation:

If, for diagrammatic convenience, one accepts the metaphor of time as a flow, a river, then the act of drawing, by driving upstream, achieves the stationary.
John Berger, “On Drawing”

1605
Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.
Emily Dickinson

A pebble polished by waves is pleasurable to the hand, not only because of it’s soothing shape, but because it expresses the slow process of its formation; a perfect pebble on the palm materialises duration, it is time turned into shape.
Juhani Pallasmaa, “The Eyes of the Skin”

I carry it, constantly
I carry it all
Tess Leak in collaboration with Gerald O’Brien, a poem celebrating the rich heritage of the River Ilen flowing through Skibbereen (a mural in the town center of Skibbereen)

About Drawing /  by Dorota Borowa

Image from the site-responsive installation at Uillinn West Cork Arts Center Residency

“...drawing is a manual activity whose aim is (...) to turn appearances and disappearances into a game that is more serious than life,” says John Berger in his letter to Jim Elkins (p 109 -110)

I add a line to my drawing on the wall - movement appears. Another line - movement disappears. A few more dots, and the drawing falls apart into space. A good few more, and a wave emerges. What am I chasing here? After a while, I realize that I'm after a feeling I experienced in the Arctic. A sensation of being more alive. But what is it to feel ‘more alive’? For me it is a heightened awareness of existence - of being part of everything else. In a conversation with Piotr Brysacz a Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk suggests that humans have a metaphysical need to take part in something greater than themselves - something that transcends them. And space fulfills that need. ("Patrzac na Wschod", p. 22) I believe making art can bring me a small piece of that feeling back. And John Berger writes in the same letter that drawing “is as fundamental to the energy that makes us human as singing and dancing” (p. 109).

Drawing is also about seeing - and about not seeing. I have to leave my studio to truly see the drawing again. When I work too long, I stop seeing it. And as I type this, a thought arises: isn’t life like that too? I stop seeing the parts of life I’ve become too used to. Maybe, on Monday morning, as I prepare lunch for my daughter, I should leave 'the room' for a second too, then come back and see it all over again. See her, sitting there in carefully chosen clothes (and really see them!) and hear her asking if all wood has to be oiled. She leaves ‘her room’ far more often than I do. Being young, she hasn’t yet grown accustomed to life.

When I was in my 20s I wrote a text for an art book which my sister and I were working on together. In it, I described a dream I had: I was in a kind of yoga class, where they asked me to bite my own arm - to push beyond my own limits. I started wondering - what if you could step outside yourself, just for a moment? Step out, have a coffee, throw the litter away, see yourself from the outside, and then step back in. How wonderful that would be.

Later in life, I learned that certain experiences let you, help you, or force you to step outside yourself. Or you just need more time. You see it, but you can’t change it. Still, seeing it can change your present perception of yourself. Like me now, reading a text I wrote many years ago.