Biography
Marcelina Palamar is a Polish-British artist based in Essen, Germany. She began her independent artistic practice in 2026 following an academic background in linguistics and the social sciences. Working across oil painting, gouache and stitched mixed media, she examines masking, the gaze and fragmented self-representation. Her figures occupy unstable spaces between exposure and concealment, while cut, layered and visibly repaired surfaces treat identity as provisional rather than fixed.
Artist Statement
I make figurative works in which the body is stretched, concealed, repeated or interrupted. Working with oil, gouache, fabric, stitching and collage, I treat the image as a surface under pressure: cut, layered, held together and made unstable.
Faces and bodies appear as masks, doubles and fragments, moving between self-protection and exposure. For me, masking is not simply a disguise placed over a stable identity but instead a psychological condition shaped by observation, expectation and the attempt to control how the self is seen. Material interventions extend this tension beyond the represented figure. Fabric obscures and reveals, while cuts and stitches make concealment, damage and repair physically present within the work.
Recent works move from isolated self-portraiture towards groups and repeated figures. Through proximity, duplication and returned gazes, I examine how identity is performed under scrutiny and negotiated in relation to others. Writing and encounters with other artists form part of this research, allowing me to test how looking, incompletion and material disruption operate within my own practice.
