The Museum is open 11:00 – 19:00
Cinema is closed now
The Museum is open 11:00 – 19:00
Cinema is closed now
Meeting
A Book at the Museum. Anubis. Thin Places. A Meeting with Joanna Karpowicz
Guests
Joanna Karpowicz, Janusz Omyliński
Location
Auditorium
Language of the meeting
Polish
Admission
Free admission thanks to a partnership with Audi
timof comics and the Museum of Modern Art invite you to a discussion with Joanna Karpowicz about the artbook “Anubis. Thin Places 3”.
Karpowicz uses the figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed deity known from ancient Egyptian mythology, to construct her own message about transience, set in contemporary realities. The origins of the series contain personal themes related to the passing of people close to the artist, but she herself says of the images featuring Anubis that “they are as much about death as they are about life.”
What began as a need to cope with the idea of our mortality has, over time, transformed into a celebration of being “here and now,” of taking pleasure in the moment. The figure of Anubis is, in Karpowicz’s view, a guide of souls, a “midwife of the departing” in Jungian terms: an “End of Life Doula.” We meet him at the end of our journey, but we can perceive him throughout our entire lives—in places where the boundary between two worlds is particularly thin—in “Thin Places.”
“I’m interested in how we cope with transience. How we find meaning in it every day. I’m interested in hope and those moments when we feel happy, in the context of transience. I get the impression that these are taboo subjects for contemporary art. Provocation and provocation are in vogue, while happiness and hope are cringe-worthy, something the art world prefers to avoid. I know that the artist’s role is to challenge the established order of the world, to expose reality, that art should be uncomfortable, but I also believe it is equally important to offer something in return. Art that inspires hope in its audience is necessary.” – Joanna Karpowicz’s credo
About the new artbook:
“Anubis. Thin Places” (publisher: timof comics) is a series of artbooks documenting Karpowicz’s work on the Anubis cycle. Volume 3 contains 129 reproductions of canvases and papers from 2024 and 2025. The publication is in English, hardcover, 28 x 21 cm in size, and has a total of 144 pages.
The cover features a motif characteristic of Karpowicz’s work: the Ruch kiosk in Szczebrzeszyn. Nostalgia is an important tool for the artist in communicating with her audience.
The book was published as part of a crowdfunding campaign on the Kickstarter platform. This model works well given the artist’s fans scattered all over the world.
The artbook’s premiere took place at Bunkier Sztuki in Kraków as part of “Czytelnia Sztuki” (February 2026).
About the publisher:
timof comics is one of Poland’s leading comic book publishers. Founded in 2006 by Paweł Timofiejuk, the publishing house focuses primarily on avant-garde and underground comics by both Polish and international authors—including American, French, Portuguese, Russian, and many others. In 2019, timof comics received the prestigious title of Polish Publisher of the Year, awarded by the Jury of the International Festival of Comics and Games in Łódź (for the second time in the publisher’s history).
The following people will attend the meeting
Joanna Karpowicz
Janusz Omyliński
This content was translated by DeepL