Marcela Paniak’s world is one of old visiting cards unearthed at flea markets, dried flowers once picked from the verge of a road, rounds of a Cat and Mouse game played with herself, old Polish nursery rhymes that sing of witches and a little girl as big as a thumb, deadly mischievous Lodz houses, without doors or windows. Is it because, throughout her childhood, her parents liked to tell her stories while projecting the shadows of tiny figurines, who danced on her bedroom walls? Is it because collecting old books of Polish tales, unearthed in her grand- mother’s attic, made her lose her wings? Is it because the question that she always asks herself is: How do we stop time? One of her series is called Elysium. The Elysian Fields are a mythological place where the wounded souls of the dead linger, without suffering or desire, suspended for eternity. Looking for the definition of Elysium on the Internet, I found these words in English for Marcela: ‘blessed, blissful, celestial, charming, delightful, enchanting, glorious, happy, heavenly, paradisiac, ravishing, seraphic’.

Diane Dufour