Katarzyna Kozyra
Born in Warsaw in 1963, a sculptor, photographer, performance artist, filmmaker, author of video installations and artistic actions, graduate of the Sculpture Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1998, she studied at postgraduate level in the New Media atelier under prof. Helmut Mark at Hochschule für Graphik und Buchkunst in Leipzig. Kozyra’s activities became crucial for the development of the new artistic movement known as Critical Art and they heavily influenced the shape of contemporary culture, often constituting a starting point for a broader discussion. She received, among others, the Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (Warsaw 2011) and the Paszport Polityki award (Warsaw 1997). She was granted the DAAD scholarship (Berlin 2003) and the Kosciuszko Foundation scholarship (New York 2000). In 1999, she received an honorable mention at the 48th Venice Biennale for the video installation Men’s Bathhouse in the Polish Pavilion. In 2011 she obtained her Doctor’s Degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. A year later, she established the Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation, which focuses on supporting women’s activities in the area of culture and art. In 2013, the Huffington Post named Kozyra one of the ten most important female artists of the new millennium. Since 2010, she has been working on her autobiographical film. In 2014, she won the Polish Film Institute / Museum of Modern Art award at the 39th Film Festival in Gdynia for her idea for an experimental movie Project X. For years Kozyra’s art has been moving the public opinion, often sparking polemics. The artist consistently questions stereotypes and subjects socio-political discourses to critical revision. Her works raise the most fundamental issues of human existence: identity and transience, life and death, religion and sex. She explores the area of cultural taboos and clichéd behaviors embedded in our everyday life.