Cats and birds 

Małgorzata Serwatka created "Cats and Birds," perhaps a screenprint, at some point after her birth in Poland in 1960. This image brings together two heraldic animals, the cat and the bird. The birds hover above the cats; these may be read as symbols of the wild, while the cats, whose tails twine together, suggest domesticity. This is no simple binary, however, as more cats lurk in the background, their stripes rendered in scarlet ink. What should we make of this combination of domesticity and wildness? Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Polish artists have enjoyed a freedom of expression that was previously suppressed by state control. It is quite possible that we can read the tension between these animals as a metaphor for the conflicting emotions that can come with a new political environment. We can only deepen our understanding of such questions by looking at Polish history during Serwatka’s lifetime and the role of the artist in Poland since 1989.