Palms, after Matthew Berka's under the palms, 2021, carving in a bar of soap, phot. Dani Tagen
by Dominika Kieruzel, Zoe Tsaff and Sian Youngerman
2016 | Site-Specific Performance and Audio Tour along Southern Outfall Sewer, Thamesmead
With Oscar Oldershaw
Performance
Documentation: film and book
2010
Chelsea College of Art and Design London
I was born in Polish countryside in 1985. My family on both sides consisted of many generations of small farmers. As a child I spend all holidays with my grandparents. Their village was one of the first to be bombed in the II World War; there were many stories, memories, resolutions. There were also stories of youth, great-grandparents, old people who spoke in rhyme or brothers who stabbed each other in anger, stories of ghosts and fear. The background for this was nature, divided into four prenounced seasons. Complete darkness at night, silence, pure whitness of snow in the winter and scorching heat in the summer. A constant presence of cosmos - a perfectly clear starry sky on cloudless nights, a gaping incomprehensible space and time. This overwhelming sense of directness between nature and human, the physical unity of both had a profound impact on me.
I started my art education at the age of 15, studying ceramics, painting, drawing and sculpture at a specialist high school in Częstochowa, Poland. My chosen techniques were ceramic sculpture and oil painting, with a great focus on portrait and human figure. In 2007 I moved to London and started a Fine Art BA at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Throughout the course I worked as a tailor, and hand sewer. I began to work with performance and costume and started to compose long experimental projects anchored in the everyday day life with elements of ritual and simbolic as a way to interact with an internal space. In 2015 I started an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths University. This course had a huge impact on my work and gave me depth of insight into the craft of performance. I started to work in collaboration with other artists and became especially focused on composition of an artwork.
In the past few years I returned to sculpture while using the richness of drama, textile, material and conceptual experience I acquired over the years and I see my work now being deeply rooted in sculpture.
Since 2019 I've been based in Bow Art's Lakeside Centre in Thamesmead.