Katarzyna Kozyra

Katarzyna Kozyra is a Polish sculptor, installation and video artist who rose to prominence in the 1990s as a leading figure of the ‘critical art’ movement in Poland, creating works that confront social taboos (such as death, disease and nakedness), usually related to issues of the sick, old or marginalised.

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Katarzyna Kozyra, 2014, photo: Małgorzata Kujawka / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

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Katarzyna Kozyra was born on February 1, 1963, in Warsaw. She studied German at the University of Warsaw from 1985 to 1988, then sculpture at Warsaw's Academy of Fine Arts. In 1993 she completed her studies in Professor Grzegorz Kowalski's studio, known as the "Kowalnia", and befriended Jerzy Stajuda, her drawing professor. After her studies she abandoned sculpture in favour of photography, video installations and performance art. In 1997 she was awarded the Passport of the weekly "Polityka" as the most promising artist in Poland, and she won an honourable mention while representing Poland at the 48th Venice Biennial in 1999. She lives and works in Berlin and Warsaw.

Controversial thesis project

Katarzyna Kozyra, Pyramid of Animals, 1993, installation, from the collection of the Zachęta National Gallery of Art. Photo by Jacek Gładykowski, Courtesy of Zachęta

Ever since Kozyra's Animal Pyramid, 1993) – her thesis project – gained notoriety in the media, she has been known as the most scandalous artist in Poland. Inspired by the "Travelling Musicians" of the Brothers Grimm, she created a sculpture out of four dead stuffed animals standing one upon the other: a horse, a dog, a cat and a cock. Two of them – the horse and the cock – she had chosen and killed herself. The artwork is a combination of this aesthetic stack of animals and a gruesome video depicting the killing of the horse, Kozyra's attempt to draw out the paradoxical discrepancy between the end product and the process of its realization. The scandal that Piramid provoked provided an example of hypocrisy from a society that accepts the killing of animals, but only if it serves a concrete, pragmatic purpose.

Her interest in corporeality dates back to the time of her studies, during which she created Anorexic Nudes in 1991 and Black-and-White Polaroids in 1992. In 1995 Kozyra presented a series of four large-format photographs entitled Blood Ties, depicting nude female figures against a background of religious symbols – the cross and the half moon. The piece was censored at the time, but two of the photographs were later reproduced on a billboard as part of the AMS Gallery project in 1999.

The taboo of the naked female body is also the subject of Olympia (1996). The work consists of a photographic triptych, a reference to Manet's famous painting, along with a video showing the artist, who had suffered from cancer since 1992, as she is given chemotherapy. Unlike Manet's Olympia (which was also controversial in its day), Kozyra portrays the female body as being old or ill. In so doing, she not only exposed social stereotypes of the female body -- which are generally dictated by the "male gaze" -- but she also breached the prevailing aesthetic canon.

Łaźnia męska (Men's Bathhouse)

It is no accident that the video installation Bathhouse (1997) begins and ends with paintings by Rembrandt and Ingres, showing that the canon of beauty in art is variable. For this project, Kozyra filmed the interior of a women's bathhouse with the aid of a hidden camera. The elderly women, immersed in personal hygiene, seem to naturally assume poses from old masters' paintings. Yet once again, the artist was confronting the viewer with a vision of aging, excluded bodies. This was the first time Kozyra thoughtfully arranged her videos throughout the exhibition space, a strategy that she continued to use in her future projects. But Łaźnia męska (Men's Bathhouse), shown at the Venice Biennial in 1999 and conceived as a supplement to Bathhouse, cast the original work in a new light. This time, the artist had to disguise herself as a man in order to be let into the bathhouse in Budapest, donning a fake beard and a silicon penis. Once inside she was filmed by her friends, who had smuggled in cameras. Thus, the artist was able to gain access to a men's world that had been hitherto inaccessible to her, and she found that the men's behaviour was very different from the behaviour of the women in Bathhouse. The women, out of reach of the male gaze, engaged in personal activities and appeared not to notice each other; the men, however, still seemed to be conscious of the presence of others.

Kozyra examined the rules of male behaviour more closely in the film triptych Chłopcy (Boys, 2001-2002). Here, a group of young men was placed in front of the camera without any instructions, dressed only in sashes that looked like vaginas; still, the way they behaved was mainly an expression of sexual potency.

Święto wiosny (Rite of Spring)

The Rite of Spring, video installation by Katarzyna Kozyra - Image Gallery

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In two works set to the music of Igor Stravinsky, Kozyra created situations in which the body is deprived of its own free will and reduced to a marionette controlled by the artist. In the video installation Rite of Spring (1999–2002), the artist reconstructed Vaclav Nizhinsky's choreography of Igor Stravinsky's ballet – an interpretation of a pagan ritual – through a video animation of the bodies of the elderly. As in Chłopcy, she also changed their gender. The installation was made up of a concentric arrangement of screens facing either inward or outward, forming two rings. The screens in the inner ring portrayed the Chosen One's solo performance of the Sacrificial Dance, and on the screens in the outer ring was the dance of the old wise men. In Stravinsky's ballet the Chosen One dies, but in Kozyra's work he is obliged to stand back up each time he falls. Dance Lesson, 2001, a video inspired by Stravinsky's Petrouchka, also features changed gender roles and the transformation of the human body into a marionette. The work is a recording of a performance in which young men equipped with pink vaginas become marionette-like dancers.

Kozyra continued to explore the phenomenon of dance in her later works. In the video installation Lords of Dance (2002), dancers dressed in golden pants and helmets perform a series of acrobatics across seven large screens. For part of the presentation Kozyra hands the camera to the dancers themselves, which results in interesting close-up shots. She also employed a similar technique in one of her most recent works, the video installation Twarze (Faces, 2005–2006), in which she filmed the faces of several dancers while they were performing different styles of dance (ballet, hip-hop, modern dance, etc.). The only aspect of the performances that remains visible is the expressions on the dancers' faces, something the public normally never sees.

For the video installation Punishment and Crime (2002), Kozyra filmed a group of men fascinated by military paraphernalia, who spend their spare time playing around with weapons and explosives with the sole aim of destruction. Not wanting to disclose their identities, Kozyra's protagonists wear masks and wigs. Once again Kozyra was filming boys' games, but this time with real guns and real bullets. The last sequences of the film depict human figures hanging from a tree. In inverting Dostoevsky's title, Kozyra blurs the boundary between the two until it is difficult to say what is crime, and what is punishment.

In Art Dreams Come True

Since 2003 Kozyra has been working on a large-scale project, In Art Dreams Come True, in which she uses various forms of visual arts, music and performance. Each phase of the project is documented on video and then presented as a separate work, although these individual pieces are eventually meant to be woven together into a feature film combining fiction and documentary. Whereas Kozyra herself pulls the marionette's strings in the Stravinsky-inspired works, this time she is the one who is being manipulated as she strives to fulfil her dream of becoming a "real woman" and an opera singer. The project features Gloria Viagra, a drag queen from Berlin, and a singing teacher named Maestro (Grzegorz Pitulej). They introduce Kozyra to their respective worlds of night clubs and opera. These two worlds collide in the video installation Non so piu in which Kozyra takes simultaneous lessons with both Gloria Viagra and Maestro, eventually performing an aria from "The Marriage of Figaro." She also performed the aria of the Queen of the Night from Mozart's Magic Flute (Facade Concert) in Vienna in July 2006, as a part of the Impossible Theatre exhibition in the Kunsthalle), for which she appearing every hour in front of the museum dressed as a singing bird. She later repeated the same performance in Pelagio in Italy following a procession to the top of a hill; the procession was led by Maestro, wearing a rat mask and carrying a Madonna statue modelled on Kozyra herself (Madonna from Pelago). She put on a similar show in Regensburg (Madonna from Regensburg).

For Diva - Reincarnation, performed at Warsaw's Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle and the Barbican Gallery in London, Kozyra appeared in a metal cage dressed as a fat, naked opera singer – a costume that made it extremely difficult to sing. There were also other versions of this performance in which the emphasis was mostly on club life: as a birthday present for Gloria Viagra, for example, Kozyra dressed up like Viagra and sang a song by Robbie Williams at the Big Eden Club in Berlin. The show included a striptease that culminated in the artist revealing an artificial penis attached to her crotch, which she hid afterward in her bag Tribute to Gloria Viagra. In the video A Winter's Tale the artist impersonated a fairy princess and surrounded herself by midgets, whom she also used in the performance The Midget Gallery during the 4th Berlin Biennial and the 2006 Frieze Art Fair in London. For the latter, she created her own gallery spaces in order to expose the show-business mechanisms that pervade these types of events. What connects the various parts of In Art Dreams Come True is the variety of styles used in each piece, from high to low, melodrama to comedy. Kozyra is also playing with stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, changing roles freely and treating gender like a performance.

While she was working on this project, Kozyra also created a series of works inspired by Lou Salome (2005). She put on a performance in the Viennese Schwarzenberg palace and its gardens in which she impersonated Salome training two actors dressed up like dogs, with masks resembling the faces of Nietzsche and Rilke (both friends of Salome). During another performance at the Roman Teatro Palladium in October 2005 - Lou Salome a Roma. Teatro di cani - dog owners and their pets were invited as an audience, eliciting unpredictable responses among the real dogs to the on-stage training of the dog-philosophers. Contrary to In Art Dreams Come True, Kozyra is the dominatrix here, and she takes total control over her charges.

In the video clip Cheerleader (2006), created for the exhibition Teatr niemozliwy (Impossible Theatre) at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, the artist sings the Gwen Stefani song What You Waiting For? and dances in a locker-room filled with well-built men. She doesn't attract any attention at first; only when she is transformed into figures from her earlier works (Bathhouse and Diva - Reincarnation) does she arouse their interest, and then their hostility. Thus Kozyra returns to an issue she raises repeatedly in her work – the issue of the body as a costume.

Between 2010-2011 Kozyra presented her Casting project, which called upon members of the public to ‘try out’ for a part in a fictional film production based on her life. She held such ‘castings’ at the Zachęta National Museum in Warsaw and in Tel Aviv. The project’s motto is drawn from Kozyra’s autobiographical pseudo-documentary In Art Dreams Come True: ‘From my omnipotence comes my belief that I can accomplish anything, because potentially I am talented at everything.’

The very same exhibition was thus not meant to be exclusively an exposition of Kozyra’s classical works but to help the artist to prepare for her role as well. One room was changed into a reading room filled with catalogues, press materials and documentary films. An interesting part of the exhibition is also a catalogue that files Kozyra’s life in two ways: by showing the artist’s own texts that describe her private life (relations with friends, life partners and co-workers but also dreams) and a precise calendar of her career. Everything is illustrated with pictures of the artist’s private life and travels and detailed information on how she works.

In 2013 in The Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle Kozyra showed her Looking for Jesus project for the first time, in which she took on the role of researcher and explorer. Kozyra started with information about Jerusalem syndrome – a group of mental phenomena described in medicine in the second half of the 20^th century that involves the presence of obsessive ideas and delusions about being biblical characters (most often messiahs) which are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem.

In 2012 Kozyra went to Jerusalem to find those who believe they are messiahs and came back with a material on the preparation of Easter in the Holy Land – pictures of Jerusalem being a scene for religious rituals and people of different beliefs, denominations, and colours; people who try to convince the artist about their holiness and authenticity; and the colourful mob of pilgrims and citizens.

In front of Kozyra’s eyes a constant performance goes on. She is not the main protagonist or a participant though, but only a recipient who tries to find and register at least a fragment of the occurrences in the city.

First Feature

Katarzyna Kozyra, "Szukając Jezusa", 2012, fot. dzięki uprzejmości Fundacji Katarzyny Kozyry — Katarzyna Kozyra, Looking for Jesus, 2012, photo: courtesy of Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation

In 2014 Kozyra became the fourth winner of The Polish Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw Film Award. The award was established with the cooperation of Wajda School and endorses projects that work between visual arts and cinema. The first awarded artist was Zbigniew Libera in 2011. The prize is worth 500,000 PLN and should be spend on the production of a feature film.

The jury decided that Kozyra’s project X fulfils the criteria of the prize most completely by using an original form and a radical idea that originate from her long experience of artistic search and notable life’s work. This particular work of art works on the vital social problem of the experience of having cancer, which the artist went through and often expresses in her art.

In her project, Kozyra wants to engage women who have cancer and are in the process of curing it – the titular X – and propose them ‘a journey’ through the artist’s works (including Olympia and The Rite of Spring from the past) believing that they will help X to deal with death and illness. Kozyra won her battle with cancer and now wants to become a guide for X, who face the same challenges as the artist did and do not know (just like the artist) if they can finally win their battle.

Portraits of Katarzyna Kozyra - Image Gallery

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Towards the end of 2018 Katarzyna Kozyra's exhibition opened in the Żak | Branicka gallery. It featured two photographic series as well as the artist's latest video piece entitled A Dream of Linnaeus' Daughter. The eponymous film was recorded in Uppsala in the Charles Linnaeus gardens named after an 18^th century botanist. Creator of the classification system of organisms and the theory of sexual reproduction of plants, whose nomenclature derived from human sexual anatomy sparked quite an outrage at the time. However, Linnaeus' progressive thinking was limited to science and did not translate into private life.

In the video, Kozyra plays the daughter of Linnaeus – forgotten by history – whose father forbade her to study. Elisabeth Christina von Linné was one of five daughters and despite her lack of education she eventually followed in her father's footsteps and became a botanist. In Kozyra's version, Elisabeth conducts a choir in which Beethoven's famous Ode to Joy is sung by a dog, a donkey, a cow, a horse, a goat and a monkey. The animals moo, squeak and hum in the rhythm of the EU anthem, standing on palettes, which symbolize Noah's Ark. Kozyra's video presents a new world order that levels all differences, deeming all creatures equal. A Dream of Linnaeus' Daughter was created out of the awareness of the impending ecological disaster that we ourselves led to, while politically the European Union is Noah's ark on one hand and a drowning Titanic on the other.

My pieces from the exhibition in Berlin describe relationships between people using the convention of fairy tales, e. g. the tradition of giving animals human features. But it is the people who are governed by basic instincts, and we, in reaction, transfer them to animals. It's more fun to express it by putting them in 'animal costumes' – says Katarzyna Kozyra in an interview with Magazyn Szum.

A series of photographs – Homo Quadrupeds (-Black, -Friends, -Blue) – presented in the ŻAK |Branicka gallery was also featured a year later at the artist's solo exhibition entitled Bipeds and Quadrupeds in New York. Unlike at the Berlin exhibition, the enourmous 10-meter photographs played dominated the small, intimate exhibition space of the Postmasters Gallery. Kozyra's world bipeds and quadrupeds are on an equal footing. This is not the first time that the artist has decided to reverse the hierarchy of people and animals, questioning the superiority of the former.

The Quadrupeds (2017) cycle generally refers to the problem of the relationship between men and 'power'. The idea came to me during my stay in Morocco in 1998. Women in burqas walk dogs – naked men on a leash. Just because women wear burqas does not mean that the work only refers to the situation of women in Islam. Due to burqas women's situation is that much more visible. Burqa is also a 'leash' – says Kozyra.

The artist tests the limits of cultural appropriation; the burqa in Homo Quadrupeds is a symbol of women's oppression, a tool of limitation that literally makes a woman invisible. But it’s men as dogs, in all their glory, tattooed and muscular who are subdued and subordinate.

In the exhibition Świat Wzorcowy (Model World, 2021), Katarzyna Kozyra returned to the role of a sculptor for the first time since Animal Pyramid. The installation, created specifically for the exhibition of The Institute of Industrial Design in Warsaw, consisted of several hundred objects used by the artist throughout her artistic career. The exhibition is an atypical summary of Kozyra's creative output over the past 25 years.

However, it was not an orderly list of individual projects, but a portrait of the repeated situation surrounding them. The title refers to the ideal situation in which an exhibition is an opportunity for communication between the artist and the viewer. This encounter always takes place in an atmosphere of tension, fear and with specific expectations on both sides. But even if uncomfortable, it is always desirable, which is why the main protagonist of the exhibition is this elusive moment, a freeze frame of this experience for the viewer, the artist and her art.

The installation included over 250 original objects used by Katarzyna Kozyra in her most famous projects, including in Olympia, Bathhouse, Men's Bathhouse and Punishment and Crime. During the exhibition, the artist's website featured full versions of all of her video projects accompanied by the history and circumstances of each of them.

Over the course of two months in 2021, the facade of the Bałtyk office building in Poznań transformed into a space of an Katarzyna Kozyra's artistic intervention. The artist portrayed a fairy-tale figure of a woman was spread over the 600 square metres of the building's facade. In the image, Kozyra is 'bound' by symbolic cultural norms that refer to gender, which is how she initiates a discussion on what it means to be a woman in today’s world. The central point of the project is a film, Letnia Opowieść (Summertale), which has gained a new context in the present reality. The installation was part of the artist's first solo exhibition in Poznań.

Selected individual exhibitions:

2021 – Model World, The Institute of Industrial Design in Warsaw
2018/2019 – A Dream of Linnaeus' Daughter, Galeria ŻAK | BRANICKA, Berlin
2017 – Looking for Jesus. Interwievs from the Archive, Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst
2016 – Katarzyna Kozyra. All that Beauty, Galerie Chrisstophe Gaillard, Paris
2015 – Katarzyna Kozyra. Looking for Jesus: Postmasters Gallery, Nowy Jork; 18. Międzynarodowy Festiwal Filmowy ZOOM–Zbliżenia, Jelenia Góra; Caterina Tognon Gallery, Venice; Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot.
2014 – Katarzyna Kozyra. Looking for Jesus: Galeria Labirynt, Lublin; Atlas Sztuki, Łódź; MsuraraMix Festival #14 Jerusalem, The New Gallery, Jerusalem; Katarzyna Kozyra: Summertale, Turku Art Museum, Finlandia;
2013 – Looking for Jesus, Żak Branicka Gallery, Berlin; Looking for Jesus, Center for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
2012 – Casting Call! Looking for the BODY, Family Business Gallery, New York; Trangression, Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, Arnhem; Warsaw Tel–Aviv New York, Akademy Salon, Warsaw, The Rite of Spring, Musee Rodin, Paris; Katarzyna Kozyra, Kulturhuset, Stockholm; Master of Puppets, Galeria Schmela Haus, Düsseldorf;
2011 –Exhibition, National Museum in Kraków; Casting in Tel Aviv, CCA, Tel Aviv; In Art Dreams Come True, Fresh Film Fest, Prague;
2010 – Casting, Zachęta National Art Gallery, Warsaw
2009 – Summertale – Galleri Image, Arhus, Dania; Faces – Art Museum in Łódź
2008 – Summertale – Galeria Żak–Branicka, Berlin; Postmasters, New York; Strafe und Verbrechen. Cheerleader – Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Weserburg
2007 – The Rite of Spring – Centrum Kultury Zamek, Poznań; Appearances from In Art. Dreams Come True – Galerie Steinek, Vienna; In Art Dreams Come True – BWA, Wrocław; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Galeria Arsenał, Białystok
2006 – The Midget Gallery – Berlin, Germany; London, UK; In Art Dreams Come True – DAAD, Berlin, Germany
2005 – A Winter's Tale – BWA Gallery, Zielona Góra; Sacre du printemps – Centre National de la Danse, Paris, France; Faces– Hebbel Theater, Berlin, Germany; Centre National de la Danse, Paris, France (2006); TR, Warsaw (2006); Punishment and Crime – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
2004 – Non so piu cosa son, cosa faccio... – Postmasters Gallery, New York, USA; Baltic Art Centre, Visby; Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trentino, Italy
2003 – Tanzübungen – Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg, Germany; Tavaszi áldozat– Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Bathhouses – David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence, USA
2002 – Lords of Dance – Museo Nacional Centro del Arte Reina, Sofia, Bulgaria; Rite of Spring– Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw
2001 – Dance Lesson – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria
2000 –Men's Bathhouse – Polish Pavilion, 48th Venice Biennial, Italy; Jiri Svestka Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic; Bathhouse – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Centre for Contemporary Art, Vilinius, Lithuania; Blood Ties – Galeria Otwarta AMS, Warsaw and Poznań; Prace 1993–1999 / Works 1993–1999 – Centre for Contemporary Art Łaźnia, Gdańsk
1997 – Bathhouse – Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Polish Institute, Leipzig, Germany (1998)
1996 – Olympia – Center for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
1994 – Pyramid of Animals – a.r.t. Gallery, Plock

Selected group exhibitions:

2017 – Uporczywe upodobanie (Pernicious Predilection), Labirynt Gallery, Lublin; Sztuka w Sztuce (Art in Art), MOCAK, Kraków; Od sztucznej rzeczywistości do selfie. Autoportret w polskiej sztuce współczesnej (From Artifical Reality to a Selfie. Self-portrait in the art of contemporaty Polish artists), Awangarda Gallery BWA, Wrocław
2016 – DE-MO-KRA-CJA (DE-MO-CRA-CY), Labirynt Gallery, Lublin
2015 – Wojna i pokój (War and Peace), Labirynt Gallery, Lublin; Let's Dance, Art Stations, Poznań Gallery, Gender w sztuce (Gender in Art), MOCAK, Kraków
2014 – Everybody is Nobody for Somebody, Santander Art Gallery, Boadilla del Monde, Madrid; In the Near Futre, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw ; INSERT2014, New Delhi; Homosexualität_en | Homosexuality_ies, Schwules Musem, Berlin; Fireflies in the Night, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Ateny; Loop Barcelona Fair/Festival, Hotel Catalonia Ramblas, Barcelona; Adam and Eve – The Loss of Innocence, Brandts Museum of Art & Visual Culture, Brandts; Prawda Piękno Dobro z kolekcji Zachęty, Zachęta – Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warszawa, Kamienica Hrabiego Raczyńskiego, plac Małachowskiego 2, Warszawa; SEVEN. Anonymity, no longer an option, The Boiler, New York; Gender in Art, MOCAK, Kraków.
Day is too short, Galeria Arsenał, Poznań.
2013 – New Openning, National Museum in Gdańsk; Day is too short, BWA Jelenia Góra; Dengeorus Liaison, CSW Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw; Lunch with Olympia, The 32 Edgewood Gallery, Yale University, New Haven, CT; Day is too short, Modern Museum in Wrocław; British British Polish Polish, CSW Ujazdowski Castle ,Warsaw Loud!, BWA, Katowice; Trangender Me, Gallery NTK, Prague; My and My Muses, Steinek Gallery, Vienna; Naked Men, LUDWIG Museum, Budapest; International Women's Day. Feminism: From Avant–Garde to the Present, Museum and Exhibition Centre Manege, Moscow;
2012 – O2 , As part of Sofia Queer Forum, Red House, Sofia; Digital Life 2012, Macro Testaccio, Rome; International Film FestivalWatch Docs, Warsaw; "Rosa Arbeit auf Goldener Straße, XHIBIT, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna; Naked Men, LENTOS MUSEM, Linz; Nude Men, Leopold Museum, Vienna oraz LUDWIG Museum, Budapest; Masquerade, Coreana Museum of Art; Copenhagen Art Festival and Conversations exhibition, Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center; t isn?t important, it?s only art..., Arsenał Art Gallery, Białystok; Theatre of Life, CSW Znaki Czasu, Toruń; Sport in Art, MOCAK, Kraków; Gatewatcher, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam; Thank You For The Music!, Kiasma, Helsinki;
2011: Casting – Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv
2011 – Particolare – course of democracy, Fundacja Signum, 54. Biennale Sztuki w Wenecji; – History in Art, Museum for Contemporary Art (MOCAK), Kraków; – The Power of Fantasy, Palais des Beaux–Arts (BOZAR), Bruksela; Polish! Contemporary Art from Poland, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin;Change of Medium. Kowalski's Studio, BWA Jelenia Góra; IF YOU LOOK FOR LONGER, CAN YOU SEE MORE? Q&A ART LOUNGE, Zacheta, Warsaw; She Devil, Marco, Rome; La Pagode, pokaz filmów, Paris; Une Chambre a soi, Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paryż; 13th Videonale (Festival For Contemporary Video Art), Bonn; MÄRCHEN MYTHOS MAROTTE, Galerie Steinek, WVienna; Drżące ciała/Tremblin Bodies, Daadgalerie, Berlin;
2006: Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2006); Egocentric, Immoral, Outmoded – Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Poland Overview – Prague Biennale 2, Prague, Czech Republic; Beauty – Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany 2006 – Gender Bender – Festival Internazionale, Bologna, Italy; Video Zone– Video Art Biennial, CCA, Tel Aviv, Israel.
2005 – Potential – Metropolitan building, Warsaw; The Impossible Theatre – Kunsthalle, Vienna; Barbican Art Centre, London, UK
2004 – Warsaw–Moscow 1900–2000 – Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Duty and Rebellion – Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Sculptors Photograph – , Warsaw; Instant Europe – Villa Manin Centro d'Arte Contemporanea, Passariano, Italy; 54th Carnegie International – Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA; Channel Zero – Netherlands Media Art Institute/Montevideo TBA, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Anxiety of Influence – Stadtgalerie, Bern, Switzerland; Under the White–Red Flag. New Art from Poland – Estonian Art Museum, Rotermann Salt Storage, Tallinn, Estonia; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilinius, Lithuania; National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia
2003 – Nackt! Frauenansichten. Malerabsichten. Aufbruch zur Moderne – Das Staedel, Frankfurt, Germany; Architectures of Gender – Sculpture Space, New York, USA; Deviations – Galerie K&K, Berlin, Germany
2002 – Media City – Seul, South Korea; From Moment to Movement – Umjetnicki Paviljon, Zagreb, Croatia; Private Affairs – Kunsthaus, Dresden, Germany; 25th San Paolo Biennial – Sao Paolo, Brasil
2001 – The Body of Art – 1st Valencia Biennial, Valencia, Spain; Art Basel – Basel, Switzerland; Arteast 2000+ – Orangerie Congress, Innsbruck, Austria
2000 – L'autre moitie de l'Europe, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France; Uważaj wychodząc z własnych snów. Możesz się znaleźć w cudzych / Beware of Exiting Your Dreams. You May Find Yourself in Somebody Else's, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Sexxx – Academia Theatre, Warsaw; a.r.t. Gallery, Płock (2001)
1999 – Zeitwenden, Kunstmuseum, Bonn, and Museum Moderner Kunst 20er Haus, Vienna, Austria; Fireworks – De Appel, Amsterdam; After the Wall – Modernamuseet, Stockholm, Sweden; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany
1998 – Body and the East. From the 1960's to the Present – Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia; W tym szczególnym momencie/ At the Time of Writing – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
1997 – Displacement / This Placement – Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; Zones of Disturbance – Marieninstitut, Graz, Austria
1996 – Me and AIDS – Galeria Czereja (Kino Stolica), Warsaw; Kolekcja 3 / Collection 3 – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Kobiety o kobietach / Women on Women– BWA Bielska Gallery, Bielsko–Biała
1995 – Transhumation – Kaunas Picture Gallery, Lithuania; Antyciala / Antibodies– Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
1993 – Ideas Outside Ideology – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
1992 – A Mystical Perseverance & a Rose – State Gallery of Art, Sopot

Author: Karol Sienkiewicz, October 2006. Updated: September 2021,HSz.