Małgorzata Gurowska is a visual artist, lecturer, and curator. Graphic design, video art, installations, sculpture, and drawing form the backbone of her artistic practice. Gurowska methodically plans her compositions to create tension between animals, especially those exploited and discriminated against by mankind. For her, art is a means of intervention and a way of challenging the status quo.
Gurowska studied Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where she now works as head professor of the Drawing Workshop of the Faculty of Sculpture. Besides that, she stages artistic workshops for children and adults. From 2003 to 2005, she ran the independent gallery Z o.o in Warsaw, then the Ltd. Gallery and the gallery of the Association of Graphic Designers (STGU). Since 2010, she has been coordinating Fundacja Sztuczna, a foundation that works mainly to promote ephemeral arts and supports artists who seek an area of expression outside of the mainstream channels. The foundation is a non-profit organisation which is not part of the institutional art circuit.
She has authored and co-authored many award-winning books on social and political issues, in which she critically analyses relations between people and non-people. Among them are Locomotive/IDEOLO (publishers: Fundacja Sztuczna/Wytwórnia, Warsaw 2013; Centrala, London 2015), Psikusy (publisher: Gangdesign, Warsaw 2016) and Edward Gorey’s The Utter Zoo as translated by Stanisław Barańczak – Alfabet Zwierząt Niesłusznie Lekceważonych (limited edition, ASP, Warsaw 2011).
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In 2016, she was awarded a grant by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for her project ARKA/optymalizacja. Gurowska has received many Polish and international prizes, including the Nami Island Grand Prix International Picture Book Illustration Concourse, the Grand Prix MTG of Young Polish Print in Krakow, the Book of the Year of The Polish Section of IBBY, the White Raven Award of International Youth Library, the Taipei International Digital Content Award, an award at the Biennial of Illustrations Bratislava (BIB), the Muzeum Widzialne Award, the Sybilla Award, the Złota Chimera Award, an award at the Shenzhen International Poster Festival, the GrandFront Award, a medal at the Biennial of Polish Poster in Katowice, the Most Beautiful Book of the Year award from the Polish Association of Book Publishers (PTWK), the Main Award at the Polish Graphic Design Awards, the Main Award – Best of the Best at the Little Hakka International Picture Book Award, Grand Prix BICeBé – Bienal del Cartel Bolivia, Bologna Ragazzi Award, and a gold medal at the European Design Awards.
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Since 2015, she has collaborated with the University of Warsaw's Philosophy and Sociology Department on Cartographies Of Strangeness, Otherness, and (ex)/(in)clusion: The Perspective of Contemporary Philosophy and Art, financed by the National Programme for the Development of Humanities. Together with representatives of the humanistic sciences, she created a project that is all about bringing the arts and sciences together, with the emphasis on post-humanism and new materialism.
Her works have been displayed in solo and group exhibitions in Poland and around the world, for example, her project MYCOsystem was presented at the 22nd International Exposition of La Triennale di Milano, which was based on the theme of Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival.
Translated by Magdalena Majkowska, March 2019
