CANCELED. My muscles are from love. A meeting with Paulina Małochleb

ATTENTION! DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL, WE ARE FORCED TO CANCEL THIS EVENT. We invite you to other events with the author. For more information, visit the Karakter Publishing website.

 

 

Karakter Publishing House and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw invite you to the premiere of Paulina Małochleb’s book *My Muscles Come from Love: On Motherhood*. Justyna Dąbrowska will be in conversation with the author.

 

This is not a book about motherhood understood as a private experience, nor about the family conceived as a safe haven. It is a book about shame as a tool of control and about work that has no name, though it sustains the entire fabric of society.
It is also a story about a family left to fend for itself by the state, yet perfectly served by the market. About the body—giving birth, nursing, tired, devoid of grandeur, yet entangled in the daily violence of norms, aesthetics, and expectations.
The author describes motherhood as a constant performance—unfolding in clinics, schools, on the street, and in homes—during which women are expected to be both tender and demanding, competent and unassuming, present yet invisible. She shows how institutions, language, and customs teach them to manage their emotions, to suppress anger and shame, so that the system can function without disruption.
Ultimately, however, Paulina Małochleb speaks above all of love—a feeling obscured by thick layers of fatigue and for which there is no language. To reach it, one must search in literature, in art, in one’s own memories—until one encounters a small, sweaty hand. A touch that anchors.