Fisheries Museum in Hel, 1.07.2025 – 19.04.2026
A gallery of twenty-one unique portraits, painted by Polish artist Kama Kuik in her distinctive, recognisable style, is the content of the temporary exhibition “Fishermen’s tales – recorded faces” at the Fisheries Museum in Hel. The public can see here a unique record of the world of people shaped by years of struggling with the element of the sea, as generous as it is demanding and dangerous. Kama Kuik’s portraits of Hel fishermen vividly recall what is still a living tissue of the Hel Peninsula, and what, with the disappearance of the fishing trade, is gradually disappearing from the image of this special part of the Polish coast.
The portraits of fishermen – inhabitants of Jastarnia and Kusfeld – are maintained in a palette that is surprising in its choice of colours and intensity, while at the same time so accurately reflecting the characters and moods of those portrayed. In turn, the essential line, bold brushstrokes and decisive contours show both the expressiveness of the features and the fleeting emotions on the models’ faces. Painted between 2019 and 2020, the images uniquely combine the painter’s artistic expression with her realistic gaze and her attempt to capture the deep truth of the person being portrayed. Distinguished by their particular way of being, hardened by the challenges of work at sea, so visible in their facial features, the fishermen of the Hel Peninsula have gained in Kama Kuik’s vision a unique and inimitable record of their history.
Kama Kuik – the artist grew up on the shores of the Puck Bay, and to this day has a spiritual connection to both the people and the landscape of her homeland. Already as a child, she directed her attention towards various forms of artistic expression, only to find her voice in painting with the support of teachers and guides in the world of creativity. She consolidated her interest in the particularly difficult art of portraiture during her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań.
For years, she has participated in group exhibitions and carried out her own projects, both in Poland and abroad. Her works could be admired many times by the public in, among others, Poznań, Cracow, Warsaw, Puck, Toruń, Stein, Berlin, Nuremberg.
On a daily basis, Kama Kuik runs the Poznań-based “Portreciarnia” – the author’s Portrait Meeting Studio. She uses the distemper technique, which gives her paintings their characteristic, intense colours. The artist’s studio is a place where she establishes a special relationship with her models. In her own words: I like this kind of focus, when the model and I look into each other’s eyes. Establishing some kind of uncanny bond. Sometimes a conversation, sometimes silence. Sometimes someone is thoughtful and averts their gaze. They look “beyond me” and I can feel their remoteness. But what I like most is the meeting of two pairs of eyes. We always know more about each other after such an encounter. New worlds open up. New human landscapes.
There is an incredible power in the colour, in the movement of the brush, a multitude of ways that invite… Sometimes leaving no free choice. Sometimes everything is possible. You decide.
A portrait is the most beautiful trace of a human being…
