If it wasn't for the tail, it would look like a dog

It is captured in motion as it scratches its back. He seems as if nothing threatens him. It looks alive. In medieval bestiaries, in which animals filtered through imagination and moral interpretation were told, the fox was an intelligent and cunning animal. Before hunting, he would roll in the red mud and lay motionless, which made him appear dead to the birds that flocked to him. It was supposed to be a metaphor for hidden, lurking evil. The impression of vitality of a dynamic sculpture, but also of stuffed animals, collides with deadness and emptiness. Ida Karkoszka's work asking ultimate questions and draws attention to a real problem. There are still farms of animals brutally killed just because a dead animal seems to someone a good decoration of the wardrobe or a sign of material status.

At the exhibition, you can see an over two-meter sculpture of a fox and new works that were created for the show. A special gesture of the artist was to fix the forms of fox heads used to stuff fur in the fabric. In the European tradition, taking off the face in a shroud is a gesture of devotion and care. At the same time, creating masks, Ida Karkoszka transfers the ghastly props of the fur industry into the sphere of art and abstraction. From them, she creates sculptural compositions that open up a broad theme of the presence of masks in culture. The mask covers individual responsibility, creates illusions, is an element of the game of appearances that the exhibition is part of – hidden life under the guise of death in medieval bestiaries and hidden death in the semblance of life of stuffed animals.