majademska

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Everyday Forms of Resistance

23.07–21.11.2021

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Secondary Archive is a platform for female artists from Central and Eastern Europe. I worked as an editor on the profiles of 14 artists. 

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Diagram for a Magazyn Szum article Exhibitions in a Schrödinger’s artworld 2010-2020 about the last decade in Polish art as seen through group exhibitions in public institutions. 70 exhibitions are divided into and analyzed through the lens of 10 thematical categories. 

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Text for Piotr Kowalski Groundworks exhibition 2-6.07.2021 Warszawa

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PERSON The diagram tracks the usage of the word OSOBA (person, individual) in current polish public debate: it’s ETYMOLOGY, DEFINITION, its meaning in GRAMMAR, PHILOSOPHY, LAW, and USUS. Nowadays the word PERSON has entered the debate about GENDER (PRO)NOUNS and is now getting more and more popular as a new NEUTRAL promoted by non-binary activists.

The diagram was prepared for an exhibition Milk Me Sugar at Arsenal Gallery, Białystok, curated by Ewa Tatar and reprinted in Arts of the Working Class #15.

“The exhibition is concerned with language of art, language as a tool of a description of the reality and articulation of subjectivity, deconstruction of language as a system of opression and the revolution of dignity, which is today realized i.e. through attention to the correct articulation of matters.”

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Sebastian Sebulec – FUR

26.11.2020 –14.02.2021 Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw

artist: Sebastian Sebulec curator: Maja Demska

Broad shoulders, bulging muscles, and fur – on the back, on the abdomen, under the armpits. At first sight, the caricaturally exaggerated attributes of “hunks” and “studs” seem to confirm the gender binarity. But the fur starts growing over the whole body, assuming an unnatural colour, and from between the legs there emerge horns and tails. Man turns into a fantastic creature that crosses over the boundaries of species and gender.

In his latest series of works, Sebastian Sebulec takes a look at pop-cultural exemplars of masculinity, filtered through the aesthetics of fan-art renderings of RPG warriors, anime characters, or anthropomorphic human-animal hybrids of the furry fandom. The works have been produced specially for the Project Room space as part of a series of presentations of young Polish artists. 

Read the full curatorial text

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Spektakle diagramów – dwutygodnik.com [PL] 2020

Spectacle of the diagrams – an essay on the pandemic data visualisation

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Dominika Olszowy. Przyczynek do biografii  Dominika Olszowy. A biographical contribution 2019

Text for the catalogue accompanying the solo exhibition of Dominika Olszowy Happy End at Galeria Arsenał (Białystok)

curator: Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew english translation: Aleksandra Sobczak-Kövesi ISBN 978-83-66262-01-0

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Time Measurement – U-jazdowski Diary 2020

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A komu to potrzebne? Who needs it?

An exhibition summing up a 2-month residency of the students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw at Groszowe Sprawy.

26.11–10.12.2019 Galeria Spokojna, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw

artists: Ania Bielawska, Julia Dorobińska, Olga Gniadzik,  Piotr Kowalski, Nadia Markiewicz, Klaudia Skuza, Kacper Woźny curator: Maja Demska

During the residency at Namysłowska Bazaar we took a break from the production of art and we have committed ourselves to collective, second-hand, low-carbon-footprint consumption. We sold stuff we no longer needed, boughts some other useless junk, bargained and solved crosswords. We cooked, licked the plates and drank beer before noon. We copied low-budget life hacks of the marketplace infrastructure and played golf at the garbage dump. We confessed how ashamed of the bazaars we were as kids. In the meantime, we reflected on the need, meaning, and responsability of making art. Then we came back to school and made an exhibition about it.

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out-of-office

03.08-31.08.2019 Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw

artists: Rafał Żarski, Piniak Przemysław, Zaumne (Mateusz Olszewski), Mikołaj Tkacz, Weronika Pelczyńska, Maja Chiara Faber, Musimy Porozmawiać (Magdalena Kobus, Marta Królak, Maria Oblicka) curators: Maja Demska, Magdalena Morawik

listen back on mixcloud

Between August 3-31 we are out of office. We have left you a voice message. Leave the office. Put on your headphones. Close your eyes. Welcome to the ether. This is your time to relax. Vacation on an installment plan, little by little, every day.

out-of-office is an audio exhibition prepared as part of the summer outdoor programme at Zachęta – National Gallery of Arts. The exhibition takes form of seven, four-part thematic audio series airing daily for the whole month. The artists developed artistic responses to popular podcast formats, working on themes of intimacy, narrative fiction and relaxation techniques (including astrology, ASMR, narrated warm-ups and radio plays).

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out-of-office was aired online, and the only event happening in real life was the opening party. For one evening, seven tents (one for each host) were set on a green square in front of Zachęta, decorated and customized by the artists. In these tents, the audience could meet the artists for short, intimate, one-on-one encounters thematically connected to the subject of their audio series.

see full opening night documentation

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Marta Krześlak, Lagoon 01.06.2019 Bazar Namysłowska

production: Groszowe Sprawy for Biennale Warszawa curator: Maja Demska video: Kasia Balicka

Bazar Namysłowska is located on the premises of a former open-air community swimming pool complex, and the trade takes place among the ruins of pools, slides, and showers. The only facility stil in operation is a covered swimming pool located in the building bordering the bazaar. On International Children’s Day the terrace of the building, normally closed, was turned into a lagoon where you could relax and take a dip in an inflatable pool. The Lagoon was created from the leftovers from Marta Krześlak’s earlier works – sponges and foams obtained as waste from the industrial production of matresses.

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Dominika Olszowy, Blank Verse 15.06.2019 Bazar Namysłowska

production: Groszowe Sprawy for Biennale Warszawa curator: Maja Demska video: Kasia Balicka

Blank Verse is a performance without the performer. She got tired, she disappeared, she’s on vacation. Cafe Dobranoc (Goodnight Cafe) is closed 24/7. Through the windows painted with kefir, (a refreshing fermented milk beverage), you can’t see what’s happening inside – but probably nothing. Enough of the entertainment. Sleep tight, goodnight!

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Małgorzata Goliszewska, Goodbye, Sadness 22.06.2019 Bazar Namysłowska

production: Groszowe Sprawy for Biennale Warszawa curator: Maja Demska video: Kasia Balicka

Małgorzata Goliszewska reads fragments of her numerous diaries from her childhood and teenage years, and subsequently destroys them. In exchange, you can leave or destroy your memories or objects from the past, that you want to get rid of for emotional reasons. It’s a one-on-one ritual: story for story, secret for secret, full discression. 

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OBROTY / TURNS

1, 8, 15, 22.08.2019 Bazar Namysłowska, Warszawa / Biennale Warszawa

installations: Marta Krześlak, Lagoon (watch video documentation) Karolina Mełnicka, Still Lives Dominika Olszowy, Blank Verse (watch video documentation) Małgorzata Goliszewska, Goodbye, Sadness (watch video documentation)

A marketplace: a collection of random objects, a ritual establishing the rhythm of life in the district, a caricature of capitalism, a grotesque theatre with a shabby set design. By visiting it regularly, one can closely follow the circulation of objects – interesting, disgusting, mostly worn out. They gain symbolic value for several hours when the trade is made, turning back to worthless rubbish afterwards. What does not sink into the mud returns to circulation the following week. At the marketplace, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the end of the world really is right around the corner.

TURNS was a series of four site-specic events (installations/ exhibitions/ performances) organized in the frame of Biennale Warszawa at Bazar Namysłowska – an open-air marketplace and a market in a neglected district of Praga (Warsaw), where I live and run a non-profit artspace called Groszowe sprawy (Next to Nothing), in a former commercial pavilion at the Bazar. TURNS evolved over a course of one month, coming back to the bazaar every weekend, when the fleamarket takes place there. Four artists – veterans of Craiglist, experts on para-artistic side jobs that often force them to take off their artist hat – examined the visual and performative aspects of the marketplace: its architecture, commercial offer, mechanisms of operation and social relationships. All the events were based on the principle of re-entry into circulation: of old artworks and ideas, failed formal experiments, scraps of former site-specic installations, and all these undefinied objects halfway between the museum and the garbage dump.

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Groszowe sprawy is an off-space presenting ephemeral exhibitions and performances, located in a former commercial pabilion at Bazar Namysłowska, an old marketplace in Warsaw, since 2018. The programme is focused on the themes of labor, production, alternative economies and temporariness as survival strategy. Over 20 events took place to date. 

check out groszowesprawy.biz for more info check out @groszowesprawy for juicy bits

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Re-Directing: East

01-30.06.2019 CCA Ujazdowski & Biennale Warszawa

Diagramming of a month-long curatorial residency and a seminar discussing the history and future of Eastern European / Middle Eastern / North African collaborations in the field of arts. Seven curators from these regions discussed the possible “art institution of the future.

more in The Residents #3 magazine