by Gillian N. Osborne // Mar. 27, 2026
This article is part of our feature topic Abjection.
Jagoda Bednarsky is known for her large-scale paintings of other-worldly, dreamy landscapes, where body parts merge with nature. Breast mountains, cockerel flowers, personified moons, flora and fauna coalesce in Bednarsky’s work to form powerful motifs that repeat themselves in infinite iterations. Appropriated cultural and artistic references lend the works contrast and humor, speaking to our obsession with wellness, motherhood and our on-screen image.
Bednarsky’s practice addresses the way we relate to ourselves as both subject and object. But the objectification Bednarsky has in mind is less societal and more familial, more personal. Her work speaks to the way we see and present our own bodies as objects, revealing the power of women’s bodies both as givers-of-life and as symbolic motifs. In our conversation, we spoke about painting disembodied organs, how to irritate your audience and the persistence of the maternal archetype.
Jagoda Bednarsky, portrait // Photo by Felix Kultau, courtesy of the artist
Gillian Osborne: Can you tell us about the breast as a motif in your work? What does this image mean to you?
Jagoda Bednarsky: I started to paint my breast landscapes after having my first son in 2018. Like many new mothers, I spent a long time breastfeeding my baby and was eternally looking down at my own body, watching my son. This view from above imprinted itself on my mind, a profile view of my own body. But it was more than that – beforehand, it was always a question: “what am I going to paint?” But after this experience with my son I had a new kind of justification and motive, which felt solid because it was life in the most basic sense. This image was so omnipresent in my life that I continued repeating it constantly. I had in mind a kind of hilly emergence, with the breast as the source of life per se, the origin of everything.
Jagoda Bednarsky: ‘Shadowland (Volcano),’ 2024, 88 x 75 cm, oil, acrylic, pastel chalk on canvas // Photo by Hans-Georg Gaul, courtesy of the artist
GO: Why do you choose to depict the breast as disembodied? And why do you depict the body as a landscape?
JB: In the history of painting there are a set of established formats. There’s portrait, landscape, life… it’s mostly all about life. I choose landscape because it’s in between the abstract and the figurative. In landscape, I can achieve a dreamy way of looking at life and the world. Of course, the dreamy atmosphere is also linked to the way I paint, in the fluidity and the material of the paint. And I’ve always been interested in surrealism, which I think comes through in the works.
When you become a mother, you go from being a subject to being something archetypal: no longer simply an individual, you are “mother” in the most general symbolic sense. There’s something relieving about this depersonalization, it brings a deep sense of peace. And it has a similar effect on the body—you are the source of warmth, comfort, food, of life itself. You are objectified through the circumstance of being a mother. So the disembodied motif expresses the physical sensibility of motherhood, the sense of being objectified in a life-affirming way, but grounded in the established format of a landscape, drawn together as nature and the source of life.
Jagoda Bednarsky: ‘Ferdinand,’ 2024, oil, acrylic on canvas, 225 x 185 cm // Photo by Hans-Georg Gaul, courtesy of the artist
GO: If we follow Julia Kristeva, disembodied parts should invoke a kind of horror. At the same time your works are obviously beautiful and communicate a deep sense of peace and tranquillity. What kind of responses have you had from viewers and collectors?
JB: I notice that some works seem to split people: the breast landscapes, for example, have always attracted critical attention, particularly from women journalists and theorists. And yet for collectors they’re still very problematic. They objectify the body, but not in a sexual way. And I have the sense that the breast motif actually becomes phallic when it’s disembodied and is finally given the powerful status it deserves. And perhaps that’s an uncomfortable idea in a patriarchal society. But it’s still interesting to me that a painting of a naked woman is perfectly acceptable, whereas paintings of disembodied body parts seem to provoke such irritation.
Jagoda Bednarsky: ‘Soft Parts,’ 2025, oil, acrylic on canvas, 185 x 155 cm // Photo by Hans-Georg Gaul, courtesy of the artist
GO: In recent years there’s been a wave of artists addressing topics of motherhood. I’m thinking of Vivian Greven, Grace Weaver and Monica Baer, to name a few. Do you see your work as part of this wider movement?
JB: I think there was definitely a turning point, a point at which it became acceptable for artists to address motherhood in their work—it seemed to happen all of a sudden. When I started painting body parts the topic was still taboo; there was a real sense that people were irritated by the work. Now it feels like people are really interested in talking about it and galleries are much more willing to show works on the topic. But I can’t take any credit for that; it’s not something I consciously set out to change.
Jagoda Bednarsky: ‘Gockel (Autoportrait),’ 2023, oil, acrylic on canvas, 125 x 97 cm // Photo by Hans-Georg Gaul, courtesy of the artist
GO: You work with lots of bodily shapes and textures in your self-portraits: plants that remind us of organs or rooster wattles that evoke genitalia. There’s a sense in which the body is objectified in these works, even while they maintain a clear sense of the multi-layered subject. How do you see this slippery space between subject and object as it relates to your work?
JB: I’m always moving between abstraction and figuration in my work, in the form of parts and wholes. I’m interested in the self and how a sense of inner incompleteness rubs against an external image of a complete and finished person, quite literally like jigsaw pieces sometimes. Only recently have I started to paint whole figures, as my life has shifted again into a new phase. In my newest works, I want to examine the very external layer of the body, the clothes we wear and the visual effect of colors and patterns, in the sense of them being a container but also a cover for the self. Repetition and appropriation are still central to my work, but now I’m more interested in how we construct an identity through image—even while the self remains in flux.
Artist Info
Exhibition Info
ARTEFACT
Jagoda Bednarsky: ‘Self as Solvent’
Opening Reception: Thursday, Apr. 23; 6-8pm
Exhibition: Apr. 24-June 25, 2026
artefact.berlin
Geisbergstraße 12, 10777 Berlin, click here for map
