Zorka (actually Zofia) Wollny studied at the Academy of Fine Arts (ASP) in Kraków, graduating with a master’s degree in 2006. In 2016 she completed her doctoral studies. At present, Wollny is an assistant professor at Szczecin Art Academy. She lives and works in Berlin.
Wollny’s films revolve around dream-like states of consciousness. Furthermore, her projects focus on choreography and performance. Music is also part of Wollny’s artistic practice; her concerts are usually collaborative works with Anna Szwajgier.
Wollny also collaborates with the most important Polish contemporary art institutions, such as Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, the Wyspa Institute of Art and the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. In 2017 the artist represented Poland at the Brussels Art Fair. Furthermore, she has twice received a grant from the Ministry of Culture. She also won the Eugeniusz Gepert Competition for painting. In 2009 Wollny was nominated for the Spojrzenia Prize for best young artist by the Deutsche Bank Foundation. In 2010 she was awarded the Artist of the Year title by Arteon magazine. Magdalena Ujma states that:
Zorka Wollny is a heir of the first generation of female artists to emerge in Poland after the 1989 transformation. She is a striking artist. Her work can definitely be characterised by animate intellectual activity, curiosity about the world around her, her unconventional take on many well-known topics and her fondness for collaboration. Hence, it is hard to classify Wollny’s art as she freely crosses boundaries between various art forms, such as literature, theatre, music, and dance. The crucial aspect of her work is undeniably being in contact with other people through conversations and exchanges of ideas. Previous interpretations of Wollny’s work put her in the context of feminist deconstruction as well as institutional critique. Yet, it can be argued that this interpretation reduces her uniqueness.
Wollny’s art has been presented in Poland and abroad, including in Italy, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Turkey, Hungary, and Canada. As well as exhibitions, she has also participated in music events (CTM – Festival for Adventurous Music and Art in Berlin, the Heroines of Sound Festival in Berlin, the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, Jazz & Experimental Music From Poland, Audio Art Festival in Krakow) as well as theatre events (Gdansk Shakespeare Festival, Łódź Ballet Festival, and Malta Festival Poznań, amongst others).
As part of Fundacja 36,6, the artist participated in Warsztaty Myślenia (2003, 2004) and Wycieczka do Krakowa (2003). Wollny collaborated closely with Roman Dziadkiewicz, the head of Fundacja 36,6. Together they made the film Martwa Natura (2004), which consists of long, static, almost motionless shots of still life. Unexpectedly, the still life ‘comes to life’, but the motion is so slight that it is quite easy to overlook it.
The element of surprise and humour is a consistent part of Wollny’s artistic practice. For instance, in 2014 she lived for a week in an Ikea in Kraków. The artist slept, bathed, and performed everyday activities there, all while people who went to shop in Ikea could observe and interact with her.
During an artistic residency in Turkey she made several films later presented at the Sabanci exhibition in Krakow’s F.A.I.T. gallery. One of her films depicted girls playing squash, the other was centred around static shots of a university campus in which small movements reveal a pair of lovers in the frame who were previously hidden from the audience’s gaze.
Wollny’s art oscillates between poetic atmosphere and critical inquiry. It is also focused on questioning the nature of oppressive spaces as well as examining what kind of behaviour a certain space can create. This question reoccurs in many of her collaborative performances. For instance, in 2014 the artist, together with composer Anna Szwajgier, created the musical score Koncert Na Wysokie Obcasy. It was performed by eight dancers in the neo-Gothic staircase of Collegium Novum in Kraków. Later on, she also performed similar scores in other art institutions.
In 2015, for Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster, Wollny wrote a musical score, Koncert Na Landesmuseum, composed for fourteen performers who followed her directions in the main hall of the museum. For this peculiar ballet Wollny and Szwajgier developed a choreography based on the behaviour of museum workers and visitors. Performers invited by the artist replicated these movements. Part of the public went to the museum with the intention of watching the performance, other spectators were there by coincidence, thus involuntarily becoming part of the performance.
Wollny organised a similar action in the same year in the National Museum in Kraków as well as in Łódź. Chodzony Na Kolekcję Sztuki XX i XXI Wieku was a performance in the Museum of Art in Łódź, where dancers went through the museum in a rhythmical procession, their pace dictated by a metronome.
Wollny’s performative concert was also held in Zachęta, in which the audience sat on stairs with their eyes closed, listening to the sounds that performers made (i.e., using various objects to create noise and intensify the sound effects). Then, in 2016 the artist created a performance in Cricoteka, a space specifically created to commemorate Tadeusz Kantor and his art. Koncert Kantorowski was based on Kantor’s drama and the aesthetics of his plays, and the composition itself was created by the audience of a workshop organised earlier by Wollny.