Alex Baczyński-Jenkins

Choreographer, performer, co-founder of a queer-feminist collective Kem.

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Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, photo Leszek Zych / Polityka (Paszporty Polityki 2019)

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Alex Baczyński-Jenkins is a choreographer, performer, and co-founder of the queer-feminist collective Kem. Born on March 23, 1987, in London, he studied Contemporary Dance, Choreography, Context at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, and Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2012-2013, he took part in Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program in Beirut.

Today, Baczyński-Jenkins works primarily between London and Warsaw. His pieces have been presented in solo exhibitions at Chisenhale Gallery (London, 2017), Foksal Gallery Foundation (Warsaw, 2018), and Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, 2019). His performances and installations have also featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Cricoteka (Kraków, 2015), Whitechapel Gallery (London, 2015), David Roberts Art Foundation (London, 2015), Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art (New York, 2016), Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw, 2017), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2017), Schinkel Pavillon (Berlin, 2021), and Klosterruine Berlin (2021). His Untitled (Holding Horizon) was performed as part of the opening programme for the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019.

That same year, he was nominated for the Polityka Passport Award in Visual Arts, and in 2018 he received both the prestigious Frieze Artist Award and the Arts Foundation Award.

The Politics of Gesture

Baczyński-Jenkins’ choreographic practice often begins with micro‑gestures - a glance, a flicker of the hands - as a way to explore intimacy, friendship, loss, and desire. Historical references and social practices form part of his choreographic language, opening spaces for dialogue and communal experience.

A central theme in his work is queerness. As he told Karolina Plinta in Magazyn Szum:

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Queer for me is about being in-between, stepping outside of recognisable categories. There are aesthetics we already read as queer, but we can also search for those we have not yet recognised as such. Queer means strange, unknown, unfamiliar. I’m interested in queer entanglements.

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Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, "Before a Thousand Roses Bloom (with Warsaw in the Background)", Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw 1-22.06.2018, photo Spyros Rennt / Foksal Gallery Foundation archive

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Early Works and Signature Choreographies

Baczyński‑Jenkins’s first solo exhibition, The Tremble, the Symptom, the Swell and the Hole Together, opened at Chisenhale Gallery in London in 2017. Staged over two months, it unfolded as a choreography in four evolving episodes, changing every two weeks.

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I wanted it to be a processual work, yet one that doesn’t simply reveal itself as a work-in-progress. It may often feel like a rehearsal - and indeed, I work with the texture of rehearsal - but it isn’t one. I’m drawn to that space where great care and a certain rawness coexist.

The show explored relationality through a queer romance, using touch and repetitive gestures - a motif that also ran through Federico (2015), presented at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in 2017, in which intertwined hands formed what the artist called an “archive of touch” and “a choreography of desire on the smallest scale.”

Similarly, XXXX (2016, presented at Studio Dance Stage in Warsaw) began with painting nails blue - a gesture both intimate and performative.

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Painting nails draws attention to hands and fingers; they become more expressive than the face, functioning almost like a screen. The blue, meanwhile, was a subtle homage to Derek Jarman’s Blue

– he explained in Magazyn Szum.

The piece also incorporated a docu-fiction film made with Krzysztof Bagiński, featuring dancers who frequently collaborate with Baczyński-Jenkins.

Gardens, Horizons, and Repetition

In 2018, his Before a Thousand Roses Bloom (with Warsaw in the Background) premiered at Foksal Gallery Foundation. The choreography - described as “weaving together queer sensuality, eroticism, memory, and desire” - drew on the history of the gallery’s name, derived from London’s Vauxhall Pleasure Garden. Staged simultaneously on two floors, the work unfolded as a nonlinear, mutable structure negotiated by performers in real time.

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Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, "Untitled (Holding Horizon)", Ephemera Festival, photo Michał Murawski

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That same year his hypnotic Untitled (Holding Horizon), created as a part of Frieze Artist Award, used the repetitive “box step” - a foundational ballroom dance movement - as its base. Dancers moved in synchrony and deviation, in dialogue with live-mixed sound and lighting. The result was a pulsating, collective dance where unity persisted despite moments of rupture.

Such Feeling - Film as Poetic Politics

Alongside choreography and performance, Baczyński‑Jenkins creates films. During his Beirut residency, he produced the found‑footage video Yet, See Him Through My Eyes. XXXX included a docu‑fiction film made with Krzysztof Bagiński, and at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, he developed Pedały, przyjaciółki i wiersz do maszerującego nacjonalisty (Faggots, Girlfriends, and a Poem to a Marching Nationalist).

His first feature‑length film, Such Feeling (2024), is an intimate documentary diary of a close circle of friends - Aaa, Billy, Dawid, Filipka, and Olo - shot between 2019 and 2023. Following them through everyday moments, the work captures everyday life, friendship, art, social transformation, and queer existence in Poland. The result is both poetic and political, co-written and shot by Krzysztof Bagiński, with music by jśa (Jasia Rabiej), and produced by Ivo Krankowski. The film’s November 11, 2024 screening was one of the inaugural events at the new Warsaw’s new Museum of Modern Art building.

Kem - A Collective in Motion

In 2016, with artist Marta Ziółek, Baczyński‑Jenkins co‑founded Kem, a queer‑feminist collective working across choreography, performance, sound, and social practice, exploring new choreographic methods and para‑choreographic strategies.

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Our projects are hybrid and fluid, dissolving boundaries between art, curating, education, activism, clubbing, and community‑building. Kem emerges from collaboration and a commitment to the politics of embodiment, sensation, and subjectivity in relation to collectivity.

Kem’s projects experiment with formats, amplifying queer, feminist, and anti‑racist work. Choreographies of Allyship brought together five queer‑feminist organizations for a program of workshops, while other initiatives have included Kem School (an educational program), Arabic language classes, and the Queer Ecologies Reading Circle.

In 2018, Kem undertook a residency at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, presenting works such as The Third Spring and launching the nomadic queer club Dragana.

Selected exhibitions:

2015 – Cricoteca, Cracow
2015 – Whitechapel Gallery, London
2015 – Sophiensaele Theatre, Berlin
2015 – David Roberts Art Foundation, London
2016 – Block Universe, London
2016 – Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
2016 – Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York
2017 – Chisenhale Gallery, London
2017 – Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw
2017 – Palais de Tokyo, Paris
2018 – Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw
2018 – Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich
2018 – Serralves Foundation, Porto
2019 – 58. Biennale di Venezia, Venezia
2019 – Kunsthalle Basel, Basel
2019 – Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
2020 – The 2nd Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Riga
2021 – Future Generation Art Prize, Pinchuk Foundation, Kiyv
2021 – Schinkel Pavillon/Disappearing, Berlin
2021 – Klosterruine Berlin, Berlin

Sources:
https://www.kemwarsaw.com/
https://magazynszum.pl/queerowe-sploty-rozmowa-z-alexem-baczynskim-jenkinsem/
https://magazynszum.pl/alex-baczynski-jenkins-w-fundacji-galerii-foksal/

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