The Polish artist lives and works in Warsaw. During the past few years, her artwork has been on display in numerous exhibitions worldwide. This is her first solo exhibition in Sweden.
Aneta Grzeszykowska is one of the most important contemporary artists in Poland. Her medium of choice is photography. She is interested in the role that it plays in documenting human identity. In her works, both in film projects and her doll-like sculptures alike, the human shape resembles that of a marionette’s.
One of the main themes in Grzeszykowska’s work is her own identity. She analyses and plays with it on different levels: erasing herself from her family photo archive (Album) or playing the role of Cindy Sherman (Untitled Film Stills). In some of her projects – e.g. the series of portraits of non-existent people (Untitled) – Grzeszykowska digitally interferes with photographs, when in others, she emphasises the performative aspect of artistic creation, while using photography and film in a more conventional way. Themes which keep recurring in the artists’ work are absence, invisibility, disappearance and the confrontation of the body and mind with non-existence.
The exhibit in Stockholm will show works from different stages of her career, including the photographic series Untitled Film Stills, Negative Book, Selfie, Halina, as well as the videos Bolimorfia and Negative Process.
The well-known series of photographs Selfie, a reflection on how we build our own image, will constitute the centre of the exhibition. It finds itself at the crossroads of photography and sculpture. In Selfie, Grzeszykowska took a radical turn towards the grotesque: she placed lifelike models of her body made of pigskin against a soft leather canvas background. In treating carnality, sensuality and autoeroticism with a peculiar sense of humour, she turned the aesthetic experience into a constant battle with basic existential emotions.
In her newest series Halina, Aneta Grzeszykowska is both the artist and the subject of her art. Using Wojciech Zamecznik’s artwork as a base, she replaced Halina Zamecznik – the artist's wife and model – with a collage made of pictures of her own naked body. By doing so, she challenges the passive way of presenting female nudity in art. Estelle af Malmborg, curator and founder of Mindepartementet, says:
Aneta Grzeszykowska is an exceptionally interesting artist. The starting point of her work, feminist art, body and performance traditions of the 1960s and 1970s, guarantee her a more and more prominent position in the international art scene. The exhibit is the first such insightful presentation of Aneta’s art in Sweden.
Aneta Grzeszykowska has taken part in many important international exhibitions (the Berlin Biennale and the Parisian La Triennale) and in the past few years her works have been on show at the New Museum and the Sculpture Center in New York, the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, the Folkwang Museum in Essen and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. The solo exhibition of the artist’s work at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art resulted in Grzeszykowska receiving the Paszport Polityki award (a prestigious award presented by the weekly magazine Polityka). Her works can be found not only in private collections but also in those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Fotomuseum Winterthur, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź.
The exhibition is organized with support from the Polish Institute in Stockholm and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. It will be on display 16th February – 14th May 2017.
Sources: http://polskainstitutet.se, own materials; originally written in Polish by AJS, 1 Feb 2017, translated by WF, 2 Feb 2017