Emilia Kina’s artistic practice revolves around painting and photography. She is interested in the materiality of the image, a simple form arising from complex problems, where the essence lies in the relations between painting as an image and painting as an object. Recalling screens, curtains and blinds, which like a room divider conceal the view, her works play by intertwining various sensory and interpretive layers. 

In her recent works, Kina reflects upon the notion of gaze as a source of joy and terror, a virtual transition to the private fantasies of the observer. The artist consistently pursues the curtain motif in a clear reference to Leon Alberti's renaissance concept of painting as a window to the world. She is fascinated by trompe-l'œil and she plays with the idea of visible and hidden which twist our perceptions of what is real or not real, and what is seen or not seen. Kina carves her relief compositions as they emerge from a wavy loom. She renders extroflections by modelling the wood and showing its subtle stratifications through nuances of colour and contrasts of light and shadow. The artist not only acts on the first level of visual perception, but also indicates the meticulous technique that she uses between painting and craftsmanship of the clippings and waves created in the material. These cut-outs rhythm the surface of each single work. Through creation of a spatial expansion towards the outside of the canvas, the artist pays attention to the internal function of the painting, its pure plasticity, and material beauty.

Kina graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. Recent solo exhibitions include: Unpacking the picture, observing ourselves at eastcontemporary gallery in Milan (2024) and Le soir qui tombe at Raster Gallery in Warsaw (2022). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at CSW Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (2024,) Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2023), Stefan Gierowski Foundation in Warsaw (2022), Eve Leibe Gallery in London (2022), Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in London (2021), Grey House Gallery in Cracow (2019), National Museum in Gdańsk (2019) and Polish Institute in Düsseldorf (2017), among others.