Aneta Grzeszykowska
BODY OF WORK
In the year’s first exhibition entitled Body of Work, Mindepartementet presents the Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska. The artist, born 1974 in Warsaw where she still lives and works, has in recent years been included in numerous exhibitions around the world and will now be showing her work in Sweden for the first time.
Aneta Grzeszykowska is central to contemporary Polish art. Her installations, film, and photographic series revolve around gender, identity, and the body but also touch on anthropological and existential questions. The exhibition features works representing various periods of Grzeszykowska’s art, such as the photographic series Untitled Film Stills, Negative Book, Selfie, Halina, the video Negative Process as well as the sculpture Franciszka.
The critically acclaimed project Selfie (2014), which somehow forms the core of the exhibition, deals with how we create the image of ourselves. Somewhere between sculpture and photography, life and death, artificial and real, Aneta Grzeszykowska uses parts of her own body when she creates sculptures from pig skin that she photographs against the background of leather.
In the series Halina, Aneta Grzeszykowska takes on the role of the artist as well as the subject. By replacing Halina Zamecznik, the wife and model of artist Wojciech Zamecznik, with a collage of her own nude body she challenges the passive role of the female nude.
With her artistic approach, Aneta Grzeszykowska locates her feminist, bodily-focused practice among artists as Cindy Sherman, Ana Mendieta, and Alina Szapocznikow. In the earlier series Untitled Film Stills (2006) she also addresses the role of the artist/model in a remake of Cindy Sherman’s classical work from the 70s, replacing the original black-and-white pictures with larger color prints. The initial composition has been strictly observed, while props, clothes and setting has been updated, revealing the passage of time.
In the series Negative Book (2012-13) she explores the photographic medium, and the relationship between the negative and the physical photograph, using pictures from her everyday life. With Negative Book and the film Negative Process, Aneta Grzeszykowska plays with the relation between photography, painting and performance. When she paints her own body black, with the shadows marked in white, this creates a reverse effect on the negative. Her body appears illuminated and stands out from the other figures in the images, creating a feeling of alienation and raising questions about memory and how we shape the story of our lives.
Aneta Grzeszykowska’s work has been well received internationally and in recent years been included in numerous exhibitions around the world. Several works from the series Selfie were recently acquired by Centre Pompidou in Paris and Grzeszykowska’s work is also represented in institutions such as the Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Fotomuseum Winterthur, the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, and Museum Folkwang in Essen.
The exhibition is produced by Mindepartementet in close collaboration with the artist and has been made possible with support from The Polish Institute in Stockholm and The Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Free admission.
For more information and press images please contact:
Estelle af Malmborg, Artistic Director, Mindepartementet, [email protected]
Åsa Åkerlund, Coordinator, Mindepartementet