“EWA PARTUM
the idea of presence I selected works”
Exhibition 15 February – 29 March 2014
The art of Ewa Partum marks a milestone in 20th century art and she herself appears as one of the most outstanding figures in European art, rediscovered today as political changes cause a redrawing of existing maps of artistic geography. Her early works are fundamental for the beginnings of Polish Conceptualism and today are being written into the international art-historical discourse.
Born in 1945 in Grodzisk Mazowiecki in central Poland, Partum made an early debut, showing conceptual works in 1965. Her oeuvre is pioneering for Conceptual art in the field of visual poetry, performance art, and in the analysis of media such as film, photography or TV, and in the field of Polish feminist art, particularly as an analysis of the female voice in public space. She is also a highly influential figure of the international mail art movement as the founder of the Adres Gallery in Lodz (1971-1977).
Since 1983 Ewas Partum lives and works in Berlin. Monographic exhibitions at the Badische Kuntverein in Karlsruhe (2001) as well as at the Wyspa Art Institute in Gdansk and the National Museum in Warsaw (2006/07) marked the first attempts to re-examine Partum’s work from a perspective of time. In 2006, at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London, Partum created an installation with alphabet letters, based on fragments of James Joyce’s Ulysses and hearkening back to her 1971 project Active Poetry, a presentation that proved a major breakthrough in her international career. In recent years Partum has participated in a number of important contemporary art shows around the world. This year Ewa Partum will have solo exhibitions at the Limerick City Art Gallery and at the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz.
Aneta Szylak