CCA Berlin is pleased to present Tensions, the first comprehensive and posthumous retrospective of Polish artists Alicja (1932–2020) and Bożena (1932–2025) Wahl. The twin sisters left behind an artistic oeuvre that spans drawing, painting, and stage design, placing the (female) body at the center of their practice as a site of desire, vulnerability, and projection. The recurring motif of doubling points to an intimate yet complicated dialogue between the sisters. Their drawings from the 1960s and 1970s, in particular, are often nearly indistinguishable from one another. Within the Wahl sisters’ shared visual universe, hybrid creatures meet in entangled emotional relationships, marked by a constant struggle between independence and connection. At times, the distorted figures seem on the verge of dissolving; at others, their elongated limbs merge into root-like formations. By interweaving grotesque corporeality, desire, and pain, Alicja and Bożena Wahl open a space for doubt and shame—feelings that, although often hidden, are profoundly universal. Emerging from an engagement with an inner spectral world, their surreal imagery confronts viewers with unsettling self-perceptions and conflicting needs.

Alongside the focus on drawings, the exhibition brings together archival materials, such as photographs, letters and exhibition invitations, that trace a network beyond the Iron Curtain and situate the Wahl sisters’ practice within an international context. Stage design sketches, illustrations, and book covers further reveal the breadth of an interdisciplinary oeuvre that is closely linked with key movements and currents in Polish art and culture. This includes Galerie A. B. Wahl, founded by Alicja Wahl in 1979. Active for more than two decades, it was one of the first private galleries in the Polish People’s Republic. Focused on art likewise rooted in the surrealist tradition, the gallery shaped Warsaw’s cultural life. For Alicja Wahl, founding the gallery also meant creating a self- determined space that brought together exhibition space, home, and studio, interweaving art and everyday life.

Rooted in a shared biography, the sisters’ deeply personal body of work bears witness to an unflinching view of themselves and the world around them. While, from the 1960s onward, a small number of women artists in Poland explored female subjectivity through performance, photography, and video in a departure from Socialist Realism, Alicja and Bożena Wahl occupy a distinct position within postwar Polish art by returning to the traditional medium of drawing. The emancipatory dimension of their images unfolds at the threshold between lived experience and fiction. From there, the Wahl sisters probe countless perspectives on a fractured self that cannot exist in isolation from another.