Studio Visit With Magda Boreysza (This Time of Year)
I don’t like Mardi Gras. At all. I saw barricades on the neutral ground the other day and it felt like a kick in the stomach. But this personal aversion is a case of it’s not you, it’s me and not the reason I have, in my capacity as an art writer, avoided Mardi Gras. I focus on visual art, which I consider:
a thing made (or selected) by a person who places it within
a framework—a space or context understood to be “Art,” where it will be considered
in dialogue with other art (historical and contemporary).
If pressed to place it in a category of art, I’d say Mardi Gras is closer to theatre, a time-based medium where objects are in service of a greater creative goal. Or I’d say it’s a community ritual with roots in religion in the genre of folk art masquerade, a convergence of objects, performers, and music. Those who make costumes, floats, throws, or king cakes have never asked me to write about their work as art or told me they intend for it to be in dialogue with historical or contemporary visual art. But other Mardi Gras enthusiasts have. Many times.
So, against my tradition of avoiding Carnival completely, I looked for an artist whose work intersects with Mardi Gras. I was introduced to Magda Boreysza, who makes costumes and, I would discover when I visited her studio, small drawings she sells as prints.
Magda is originally from Poland and when we met outside The School art studios on Japonica Street, I liked her immediately, partly because she was gracious about my effort to begin our conversation in Polish (which I speak at the level of a one-year-old). Her studio is a large space, a former classroom, divided into smaller sections by shelving units, t-shirts and prints piled neatly on several of them. A large island work table was covered with cloth, pom-poms, and an embroidered fabric piece in progress. We stood facing a large headpiece that hung on the wall and near it, an intricate costume on a tailor’s mannequin.
The painted headpiece is about two-and-a-half feet wide with large eyes, a pink pig-like nose, and cardboard horns covered in gold leaf. It resembles a colorful cousin of Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things. Part of the headpiece is lined with yarn pompoms and along the bottom is a fabric fringe. Traditional costumes from around the world include elements like fringe and tassels that become animated with movement and dance. Looking at masks or costumes in a gallery or museum, the absence of the wearer and original context is always present. What was designed to be worn in front of an audience often outdoors is an empty and still artifact in a vitrine. I looked at the construction of the headpiece, the materials and detail, concluding that it’s meant to be viewed from a distance of a few feet. The mask and garment next to it was made of softer fabric whose intricate stitched detail welcomes closer scrutiny.
I shared these observations with Magda, who told me the large and heavy headpiece was made during the pandemic, not for a full day of parading, but a relatively short and socially distanced outing. The softer and more comfortable looking costume was made for an ordinary year, for meeting on the streets and admiring each other’s creations. She described Mardi Gras as a “pop-up universe” and for her, masquerading in St. Anne’s offers transformation. “I get to change who I appear as, put it on display and I feel seen for who I am.” Her costumes are, she says, created to bring to life the creatures she invents in her drawings.
“Can I see some drawings?” I asked, specifying I’d prefer to see the original drawings rather than the prints she sells commercially. Magda collected a small pile of drawings from a flat file and brought them to the large table. Her drawings are stunning, reminding me of Kiki Smith, whose witchy, fantastical drawings and sculptures glean from the tradition of illustration and are presented in galleries and museums. Magda’s creatures—some animal, some human, some both—are nestled in intricately-drawn natural environments and scenarios. I leaned into the drawings with an intensity, yearning, and posture that recalled studying picture book illustrations in childhood. I was absorbed by them, forgetting all about Mardi Gras and Art.
Magda Boreysza, Creatures in the Forest
A small, vertical ink drawing depicted four short-haired creatures together in a wooded clearing under a starry sky. It filled me with something like déjà vu, and the faint memory of being at peace, a feeling so foreign to me now it seemed unreal. Growing up, I spent summers in the Adirondack mountains. My brother Joey and I would bring our sleeping bags down to the dock and lie under stars so abundant their light kept me awake. The atmosphere in the drawing was like those nights on the lake where solitude and company coexist and everything seemed connected by some quiet, undergirding benevolence. Maybe it’s being an adult or the burning world ever-present in my news feed, but until I looked at this small illustration, I had forgotten this feeling of well-being was possible.
The experience of art—whatever form it arrives in—has the power to illuminate the things important not to forget. Newly aware of my overwhelming exhaustion, I broke away from the drawing like I was closing a treasured picture book, like leaving a dream for waking life. “So… Mardi Gras,” I said, remembering the question at hand. I may not be the best audience for costumes, whose full creative potential blossoms in loud and crowded bacchanalian spaces. But I was moved by Magda’s description of how the joyful procession of St. Anne’s revelers ends at the river where participants scatter flowers or ashes, acknowledging loss, hope, and togetherness.
Mardi Gras has profound meaning to many who participate and I have no desire to rain on their parade. If people want to call the abundant creativity of the event “art,” that’s fine with me, though it is born of a different human urge: to transform, congregate, celebrate excessively. Mardi Gras is not my jam, but I agree with one of its oft quoted anthems: “Do Whatcha Wanna.” Personally, I wanna stay home and wake up early on Ash Wednesday, my favorite day in New Orleans, imagining all the revelers safe in their beds, dreaming quiet dreams.
Untitled costume and Untitled headpiece photos by Emily Farranto
