airbrushed onto paper towels, these fragile artworks explore memory and perception

helena minginowicz paints on materials designed to disappear

Polish artist Helena Minginowicz turns some of the most ordinary objects of everyday life into unexpected artworks. Living and working in Poznań, she uses an airbrush technique to paint faces, bodies, animals, and fragments of text onto paper towels, tissues, napkins, beauty masks, and other disposable materials. Using these ephemeral surfaces as her canvas, the artist explores themes of fragility, perception, memory, and the fleeting nature of contemporary existence. Her works are currently included in Let’s Face It, a group exhibition on view at Warsaw’s Galeria Lotna dedicated to contemporary approaches to representation and identity.

Minginowicz allows the physical characteristics of disposable objects to actively shape each image. Embossed floral and geometric patterns, folds, tears, creases, and wrinkles interrupt the painted surface, becoming integral elements of the composition.

Paper towels and tissues are objects designed for brief use before being discarded. The artist creates a tension between permanence and disappearance by transferring carefully rendered imagery onto these fragile surfaces. What is typically overlooked or thrown away acquires a renewed presence, encouraging viewers to reconsider the value of everyday materials that pass unnoticed.

MY OWN THOUGHTS, acrylic on paper towel, 22 × 40 cm, 2026 | all images by Helena Minginowicz, unless stated otherwise

images emerge through a fragile veil

Using an airbrush, Helena Minginowicz creates soft tonal transitions and blurred contours that seem to hover within the material. Faces appear from behind embossed patterns, bodies dissolve into folds, and animals emerge from layers of tissue. The resulting images remain partially concealed, never fully revealing themselves to the viewer.

This visual ambiguity reflects the artist’s ongoing interest in perception and subjective experience, whose work suggests that every act of seeing is filtered through personal memories, emotions, and assumptions. The disposable material becomes a veil through which the image can only ever be partially understood.

Minginowicz’s works draw attention to objects rarely associated with artistic value. A household paper towel, a cosmetic mask, or a folded napkin becomes a site of contemplation. Through subtle interventions, the artist reveals an unexpected beauty hidden within materials manufactured for convenience and consumption.

The contrast between the care invested in each airbrushed image and the temporary nature of the support heightens the emotional charge of the work. Delicate faces, vulnerable bodies, and gentle animal figures appear suspended within objects destined to deteriorate, emphasizing the fragile condition shared by both material things and living beings.

MY OWN THOUGHTS, acrylic on paper towel, 22 × 40 cm, 2026

exploring vulnerability through material and image

Throughout the Polish artist’s practice, vulnerability exists on multiple levels. The physical fragility of the support mirrors the vulnerability of the subjects depicted upon it.

In several works, insects appear alongside faces and animals, while fragments of language emerge from folded napkins and tissues. These interventions introduce additional layers of meaning, touching on themes of mortality, transformation, intimacy, and decay. The imagery resists fixed interpretation, remaining open to personal associations and emotional responses.

At the heart of Minginowicz’s practice is a fascination with the unstable nature of images. Her works exist in a space between visibility and concealment, permanence and impermanence, presence and absence. By choosing materials intended for immediate disposal, she transforms everyday objects into poetic reflections on how memories, emotions, and identities are continually formed, altered, and lost.

Through paper towels, tissues, and other fleeting materials, Helena Minginowicz invites viewers to slow down and look again at what usually escapes attention. In doing so, she reveals how even the most fragile objects can become powerful vessels for reflection, emotion, and human connection.

First/Last KISS acrylic on paper towel, custom frame 30 × 30 cm, 2026