SONJA CZEKALSKI

I create as a response to my own experience of being a woman. I use my individual story within the collective story of my ancestry and the web of women who raised me, to share our experience of being a woman. With less than 30% of movies having speaking roles for women, and best seller books fluctuating around 40% written by women, it is imperative for women’s voices and stories to reclaim herstory. I look to empower the voices of women by creating work that recreates, retells, or establishes a space to share our stories that have been overlooked or never told. Through these stories, I create work that reclaims the power in a woman's body, skin, sexuality, labor, and connection to nature. 

I recreate these ideas by creating tapestries, clothing, and skin like paper to establish visual metaphors and symbols to express the authentic lives and stories of women. I use typically delicate “feminine craft” materials to contradict the coarseness within their fragility and to honor their importance and role in art-making. I want to show the parts of her skin, her story, and her ancestry through the traditional yet unconventional craft-labor; to reclaim the over-sexualized poses, bodies, and skin on a woman’s figure and re-establish the power of a woman’s connection to mother nature.

 I use my work to disrupt the paradigm of the female figure. I direct my work within the 4th wave of feminism, focusing on the empowerment of female representation in mass media. The female figures I create derive from a google search of the word “woman.” More often than not, the word “woman” leads to pornographic pictures. With 40% of pornographic pictures representing violence against women, I take the female figures from under the mass media male gaze and transcend them into a world of their own; to experience the pleasure, confidence, and stories derived from their own bodies and protagonist narrative.  I aim to shock the viewer and confront them with these often disturbing images and depictions of women that are vividly active in the media in order to question the dominating female representation. I also use the bodies to create grotesque yet beautiful images, patterns, and garments to represent beauty in unconventional and un-stereotyped ways. 

 I want the viewer to explore the female figure through an empathetic gaze. By creating pieces that are simultaneously quiet and confrontational I beg the viewer to lean in closer to my work. To lean in to listen to the whisper in order to see and hear the full herstory. I create a space where the viewer is held accountable for listening to the female experience. In doing so I use my work to push the viewer to question the validity of the stereotyped feminine existence through confronting their own bias; to experience and respond to the embarrassment, shame, and confusion of female sexuality, fertility, social expectation, and responsibility. I use my work to empower the role of the female figure and honor the authentic lives and stories of each and every woman.

Sonja Czekalski is a contemporary interdisciplinary artist. Her current work embeds itself in the fourth wave of American feminism, using fiber arts and hand-paper making to reclaim the craft, body, and voice of the web of women who raised her.

She is currently enrolled at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, Massachusetts where she is an MFA candidate for Interdisciplinary Studies. She received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Art Education with a concentration in painting from Rhode Island College in 2017. Sonja has pursued a career in secondary art education and is eager to continue her teaching at the post-secondary level. 

Sonja has been included in various group shows and exhibitions including a “Best in Show” at the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative. Sonja is an artist member at the historical Hera Gallery in Wakefield, Rhode Island, and a contributor to Witches Magazine.