NATALIA ZAGORSKA-THOMAS
In Absentia
Solo show
Tabula Rasa Gallery London
3 December 2025 – 30 January 2026
Opening: 3 December 2025, 6:00–8:30 pm
Performance: 7:00 pm
In Absentia
Solo show
Tabula Rasa Gallery London
3 December 2025 – 30 January 2026
Opening: 3 December 2025, 6:00–8:30 pm
Performance: 7:00 pm
Tabula Rasa Gallery is pleased to present In
Absentia, a solo exhibition by Natalia Zagorska-Thomas, opening 3 December
2025 at our London space. The exhibition brings together a new series of
mixed-media works in which domestic objects—eggshells, lipsticks, powder
compacts, cups—are gathered, reorganised and reassembled. Once designed for single,
utilitarian purposes, these materials are gently dislodged from their everyday
roles and reactivated within new cycles of meaning.
In In Absentia, absence becomes a generative force. Each work operates in the space left behind by former uses, owners and gestures: what remains when function dissolves; what persists after care has stopped; what stories linger when bodies are no longer present. Zagorska-Thomas’s practice centres on repair, fragility, resurrection, and the quiet but insistent force of ordinary objects to carry universal human themes. By shifting the context and identity of overlooked materials, she reveals their near-talismanic capacity to bear witness to intimacy, labour and transformation.
This sensibility is captured by scholar Dawn Adès, who writes:
“The world is full of discarded, unloved and broken things. Those objects lucky enough to be gathered by Natalia Zagórska-Thomas are mysteriously coaxed back to life, becoming beautiful through new and unexpected juxtapositions… their original functions absorbed and transformed, the objects now existing independently in worlds of their own.”
For Zagorska-Thomas, authorship is a quiet negotiation with the material. “Because I almost always start with an existing object, I don’t consider myself a proper author of the final work,” she notes. “I’m more a pair of hands helping to bring about its emancipation from daily servitude.” At times she treats objects like fragments of forensic evidence, reading their surfaces for what remains; at others, she allows them to speak again, their stories unfolding somewhere between what they once were and what they are becoming.
Alongside the works in In Absentia, Zagorska-Thomas also welcomes collaboration with audiences through a bespoke commission process. Visitors are invited to bring their own broken or discarded objects—such as shattered glassware, damaged domestic items, or materials carrying personal history—so that the artist can repair, stitch, or reconfigure them into new works. This process extends her ongoing interest in afterlives and transformation: objects that once signified loss or rupture are given renewed presence, entering a different cycle of meaning while retaining the traces of their past.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Natalia Zagorska-Thomas is a London-based Polish-British artist, curator and textile conservator whose practice spans mixed media, installation and performance. She holds a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and an MA in Textile Conservation from the Textile Conservation Centre at the University of Southampton. She is also the founder and curator of Studio ExPurgamento, an independent exhibition space in Camden Town presenting work by both international and UK-based artists.
Her artistic practice is shaped by her long-standing experience in conservation and the museum sector. As a textile conservator, she has worked with institutions including the Royal Academy of Arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of London, Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, the National Trust, Zenzie Tinker Textile Conservation Ltd., and the Royal Collection.
In In Absentia, absence becomes a generative force. Each work operates in the space left behind by former uses, owners and gestures: what remains when function dissolves; what persists after care has stopped; what stories linger when bodies are no longer present. Zagorska-Thomas’s practice centres on repair, fragility, resurrection, and the quiet but insistent force of ordinary objects to carry universal human themes. By shifting the context and identity of overlooked materials, she reveals their near-talismanic capacity to bear witness to intimacy, labour and transformation.
This sensibility is captured by scholar Dawn Adès, who writes:
“The world is full of discarded, unloved and broken things. Those objects lucky enough to be gathered by Natalia Zagórska-Thomas are mysteriously coaxed back to life, becoming beautiful through new and unexpected juxtapositions… their original functions absorbed and transformed, the objects now existing independently in worlds of their own.”
For Zagorska-Thomas, authorship is a quiet negotiation with the material. “Because I almost always start with an existing object, I don’t consider myself a proper author of the final work,” she notes. “I’m more a pair of hands helping to bring about its emancipation from daily servitude.” At times she treats objects like fragments of forensic evidence, reading their surfaces for what remains; at others, she allows them to speak again, their stories unfolding somewhere between what they once were and what they are becoming.
Alongside the works in In Absentia, Zagorska-Thomas also welcomes collaboration with audiences through a bespoke commission process. Visitors are invited to bring their own broken or discarded objects—such as shattered glassware, damaged domestic items, or materials carrying personal history—so that the artist can repair, stitch, or reconfigure them into new works. This process extends her ongoing interest in afterlives and transformation: objects that once signified loss or rupture are given renewed presence, entering a different cycle of meaning while retaining the traces of their past.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Natalia Zagorska-Thomas is a London-based Polish-British artist, curator and textile conservator whose practice spans mixed media, installation and performance. She holds a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and an MA in Textile Conservation from the Textile Conservation Centre at the University of Southampton. She is also the founder and curator of Studio ExPurgamento, an independent exhibition space in Camden Town presenting work by both international and UK-based artists.
Her artistic practice is shaped by her long-standing experience in conservation and the museum sector. As a textile conservator, she has worked with institutions including the Royal Academy of Arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of London, Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, the National Trust, Zenzie Tinker Textile Conservation Ltd., and the Royal Collection.
Tabula Rasa Gallery (London)
Unit One, 99 East Road,
Hoxton, London
N1 6AQ
Unit One, 99 East Road,
Hoxton, London
N1 6AQ
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