Trapped
The hardest prisons to escape are the ones built from parts of ourselves.
to be good enough
without the pain of painting
not to fear my own scream
to move against the current
to believe that I can
to touch my own desires
that opens the skin?
Barbara Puto, 2024
When external expectations harden into an internal cage.
Trapped / Uwięziona
2026
Oil on canvas
70 × 50 cm
From The Construction of Freedom
Trapped
The most dangerous prisons have no bars.
They are built when other people’s expectations, fears, patterns, prejudices, and dependencies stop sounding like voices from the outside and begin to speak in our own voice.
Trapped captures the moment when the boundary between a person and what confines them almost disappears. The net is no longer merely around the body. It has grown into it. It has become part of its surface, its memory, its way of being.
And that is precisely why it is so difficult to break free.
How do we free ourselves from something that has begun to look like part of who we are?
The figure does not fight. She is curled inward, withdrawn, almost enclosed within herself. The light is still there, but it is fading. It has not disappeared completely — it has been dimmed by the weight of a structure that is no longer carried around the body, but within it.
This is not a painting about an external oppressor.
It is a painting about the moment we discover that part of the cage has been built from what, for years, we have called “ourselves.”
The hardest prisons to escape are the ones built from parts of ourselves.
I begin with a ballpoint pen sketch. The two essential elements of the painting are already present at this stage: the folded figure and the net that surrounds and penetrates her. I am searching for the relationship between the position of the body and the structure that will become a physical image of limitation.
01. First Sketch
I transfer the sketch onto the canvas and begin building the body through color. I focus on the hunched posture, the tension in the back, and the position of the arms. The yellow drips are like traces of light that have escaped from within her. They suggest something that was once present — energy, openness, perhaps hope.
02. Building the Figure
At this stage, I begin covering the body with the net. I do not treat it as an external cage — I draw it directly across the figure so that it gradually becomes part of her surface. The limitation no longer exists only around the person; it begins to enter her own structure.
03. Covering the Body with the Net
The net spreads further across the body and becomes denser. It no longer simply surrounds the figure — it penetrates her form. The distinction between what comes from outside and what has already become part of her begins to disappear.
04. Penetration
The net wraps around the body, and the body begins to absorb it. The boundary between the figure and the structure becomes increasingly blurred. What began as an external limitation starts to become part of her own form.
05. Absorption
In the final stage, the body and the net are almost inseparable. The prison no longer needs walls — part of its structure is carried within the self. I mute the yellow drips because the light, energy, and hope have become faint. They are still present, but barely visible beneath the weight of the structure.
06. Trapped