Portfolio: Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė
They work in multiples across performance, painting, sculpture, fragrance, and video installation
Dorota Gawęda (1986, Lublin, Poland) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (1987, Kaunas, Lithuania) are an artist duo founded in 2013, based in Basel (CH). Both are graduates of the Royal College of Art in London (2012) and founders of the YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP ( 2013 -2021).
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Photo: QUOTE—UNQUOTE, Bucharest
They work in multiples across performance, painting, sculpture, fragrance, and video installation – where language breaks down and one genre morphs into many. Transfusing different bodies of knowledge across space and time, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė nurture a research-based practice that weaves together seemingly disparate fields – ecology and technology, science and magic, nonhuman intelligence and shared speculation. An interest in folklore runs through their work- weirding the relationship between body and landscape through storytelling. Opening up alternative states and temporalities through queerness and magic, it grafts onto the non-visual and non-linear, machine-hallucinated, olfactory, and ritualistic, as stories loosely tethered together by language. Fact, fiction and theory intertwine and are infused with scents, chants, and mythical characters. Creating sensory environments that directly involve the audience, using both screen technology and organic elements, they generate fragmented narratives that echo our contemporary anxieties.
The duo exhibited internationally, including ar/ge Kunst, Bolzano (2022); Shedhalle, Zürich (2022); Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna (2022); Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2022); Kunstverein Hamburg (2021); Istituto Svizzero, Palermo and Milan (2021); Kunstverein Leipzig (2021); Swiss Institute, New York (2020); Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2020); Kunsthalle Fribourg (2020); Futura, Prague (2019); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Cell Project Space, London (2018); 6th Athens Biennale (2018); Kunsthalle Basel (2017); ICA, London (2017); MOMA, Warsaw (2016); Berlin Biennale 9 (2016); MaM, Paris (2015) among others. They are the recipients of the CERN Collide Residency 2022 and laureates of the Swiss Performance Art Award 2021. Their upcoming exhibitions will be presented at EPFL Pavilions in Lausanne and Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2023.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless Part I, 2020, HD Video, Photo: horizontal vertigo, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless Part I, 2020, HD Video, Photo: horizontal vertigo, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf.Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless Part I, 2020, HD Video, Photo: horizontal vertigo, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Raw (Azur|Julia), 2020, Inkjet print on archival paper. Photo: Lucas Hirsch Gallery, Düsseldorf.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless Part II, 2021, Three channel HD Video, Photo: Oh make your fingernails into spades/ your palms into shovels, Kunstraum Niederösterreich, ViennaDorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless Part II, 2021, Three channel HD Video, Photo: Oh make your fingernails into spades/ your palms into shovels, Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Leave No Trace (Milan) (I-VI), 2021, Aluminium, wood, digital print on chiffon, Photo: Magazine, Kunstverein Hamburg.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Leave No Trace (Milan) (I-VI), 2021, Aluminium, wood, digital print on chiffon, Photo: Magazine, Kunstverein Hamburg.Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Leave No Trace (Milan) (I-VI), 2021, Aluminium, wood, digital print on chiffon, Photo: Magazine, Kunstverein Hamburg.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, -lalia, 2021-22, Performance. Photo: Swiss Performance Art Award, Lokremise, St. Gallen.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, -lalia, 2021-22, Performance. Photo: Swiss Performance Art Award, Lokremise, St. Gallen.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Kratt I and II, 2021, Recycled leather, hay, chromed steel fixtures. Photo: ar/ge Kunst, Bolzano.Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Kratt I and II, 2021, Recycled leather, hay, chromed steel fixtures. Photo: ar/ge Kunst, Bolzano.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless Part III, 2023, Two channel HD Video, Film still: Courtesy of the artists.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless Part III, 2023, Two channel HD Video, Film still: Courtesy of the artists.Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless Part III, 2023, Two channel HD Video, Film still: Courtesy of the artists.
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Freestanding Votive Flowers, 2022, Optical fibres, paper and plastic flowers, programmed LED light grid, mirror polished stainless steel, Photo: Queer Trust, Shedhalle, Zürich.
