She studied Art History at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (1974-77) and at Warsaw University (1978-80). Before she left Poland, she was attached to the Fine Arts Academy and the Dziekanka Workshop in Warsaw. She has lectured at the Concordia University in Montreal, the School of Art Institute in Chicago, the School of Visual Arts in New York, Canterbury College of Art and Design, and the Konstfack University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm.
During the ‘80s, Lewandowska used photographs, lightboxes, foilgrams and slide projections in her work. She made spatial arrangements taking advantage of the transparency of materials, and she focused on the way in which reality is transformed into a representation via mechanisms of production and the reception of images (e.g., Cassandra, Phaedra, Sappho, 1988). Lewandowska's exhibitions were often based on a play between the object, a photograph of the object and the gallery space itself (e.g., Untitled Bubblewrap, 1992). Light was also an important aspect of her installations; indeed, lightboxes often played the major role. At the Photographer's Gallery in London in 1991, she devoted her entire exhibition to light, "revealing" hidden windows and skylights, and playing on the difference between artificial and natural light.
As David Joselit wrote:
Lewandowska's installations lead to the conclusion that reality, even in its most modest form, i.e., wooden floors, gypsum dividing walls or lighting appliances, is always and without any exception the outcome of the intermediation of representation techniques and conventions. Her work - like the Lacanian theory of the gaze - talks about the impossibility of any 'innocent'-kind of perception of that which is visual.
In 1993, in the Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, the artist prepared her Point of view, which showed the way in which she was being inspired by the conceptual tradition. She placed photographs on neon pipes accompanying them with words made out of cables: "original invaluable", "clean whiteness", "new". Paweł Polit wrote: "The photographs together with the text built a syntagmatic chain".
Since 1995, Marysia Lewandowska has been collaborating with Neil Cummings. They work on the borderline between art and theoretical research. Their projects study the confrontation between artists, institutions, the art market, and the public. They critically reflect upon contemporary cultural goods, their place in economic and social reality, and in political discourse. Concrete works are always preceded by lengthy research and analysis of the social and historical context. The projects themselves take on a variety of forms - video work, portals on the internet, and in particular, exhibitions and publications (books, catalogues, collections of texts). Their first collaborative project resulted in the book, Lost Property (1996). In the Errata catalogue (1996), Lewandowska and Cummings analysed the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art collection in Denmark, revealing the way in which such an institution adorns the objects in its possession with importance and rank. In the project Browse (1997), they made a comparative analysis between a museum and a shopping centre, seemingly disparate places that use similar display and distribution strategies, forcing upon the viewers / clients a specific attitude towards the presented objects. Within the framework of the Pour les Curieux in Geneva (1998), Lewandowska and Cummings took a closer look at the problem of artistic education. In 2000, they became interested in the archives of the Design Council at Brighton University (Documents). The following year, Lewandowska and Cummings examined the interrelations between the Bank of England and Tate Modern (Capital). This project expanded into a series of seminars and a publication.
In 2001, the artists made a significant intervention in the London Victoria and Albert Museum where they installed sound - a recording of restaurant noise, a school cafeteria, a dishwasher (Use Value) - in the room containing the table porcelain exhibition.
We are aware" - they wrote - "of how the conventions of the museum - its habits of classification, display and exhibition - turn all artefacts, whatever their provenance, into potential works of art: objects to be looked at (...). The museum object is doomed to live forever in the conservation perfection of the vitrine.
One of the duo's best-known projects is the Enthusiasts, shown for the very first time at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw in 2004, and later in other galleries. During this exhibition, they presented films from amateur film clubs that had appeared throughout Poland from the 1950s until the end of the '70s. The materials were divided into three thematic parts: Love (Miłość), Longing (Tęsknota) and Labour (Praca). Łukasz Ronduda noticed that:
Lewandowska and Cummings are trying to disrupt the passion of a collector who wants to preserve the value, significance and history of a given object (or phenomenon), with the allegorist's desire to inject his/her own meaning into that same object, to show it in the context of a new allegoric meaning.
This is because the project Enthusiasts is a sociological-artistic type of project.
The film club enthusiasts often inverted the logic of work and leisure" - explained Neil Cummings in his interview - "Becoming truly productive when pursuing their passions, and using work for their own rather than the factory or State intentions. And in this sense we think of their practices as being political - in the broadest sense.
In their subsequent projects, Lewandowska and Cummings dealt with different aspects of common and individual ownership, and with the limitations of copyright, especially in the context of creative work (The Commons, 2004; Screen Tests, 2005-2006).
Author: Karol Sienkiewicz, December 2008.
Major exhibitions - Marysia Lewandowska:
- 1986 - "Placed, Displaced" - Dziekanka Workshop, Warsaw
- 1987 - "Drawing Room Installations" - Rosebery Avenue, London (collective); Whitechapel Art Gallery (collective); Camerawork, London (collective); Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
- 1988 - Carlile Gallery, London (individual); Impressions Gallery, York (collective)
- 1989 - "Art after the Empire. New Expressions in British Art" - Hammond Galleries, Lancaster, Ohio
- 1990 - N.A.M.E. Gallery, Chicago (collective); Riverside Studios, London (with Peter Scott); "It's A Still Life" - Arts Council Collection, Royal Festival Hall, London
- 1991 - Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (individual)
- 1992 - "strip light" - The Photographer's Gallery, London (individual); Cabinet Gallery (individual)
- 1994 - "Zeitgenössische Polnische Kunst" - Kinsverein, Freiburg (collective)
Major exhibitions - Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska:
- 1995 - "Errata" - part of the exhibition Now/Here - Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
- 1997 - "Material Culture" - Hayward Gallery, London (collective); "Collected" - London (a collective event throughout all of the city)
- 1998 - "Pour les Curieux" - Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva
- 1999 - "Gesichter und Dinge" - Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin
- 2000 - "Not Hansard: The Common Wealth" - John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; "Voila" - Musee d'Art Contemporain, Paris (collective)
- 2001 - "Give and Take" - Victoria and Albert Museum, London (collective); "Modern Chairs 1918-1970-2000" - Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; "Trade" - Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland (collective)
- 2002 - "The Gift - ICI", New York (collective); "Free Trade" - Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester
- 2003 - "Independence" - South London Gallery, London
- 2004 - "Enthusiasts" - Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; "International" - Liverpool Biennial (collective)
- 2006 - "Enthusiasm" - Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Kunstwerke, Berlin; Tapies Foundation, Barcelona; London Architecture Biennale - London (collective)
- 2007 - "Enthusiasm" - Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, Montreal, Canada
- 2008 - "Mimetisme" - Extra City, Antwerp (collective)