BANASIAK JAKUB
Jakub Banasiak, PhD, is an art historian and art critic, Assistant Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Faculty of Artistic Research and Curatorial Studies. He is the author of the book titled “Proteus Times. The Decay of the State Art System 1982–1993” (2020), for which he was nominated for the Jan Długosz Award. He is a member of the editorial board of the academic journal “Miejsce” and “Szum” art magazine. His research focus lies on socialist state art system, and art of the Post-communist transformation period. He is the author of numerous texts on both art history and art criticism. He also was a curator of the exhibition entitled “Tectonic Movements” at the Museum of Art in Łódź (2022–2023), where he presented the results of his research on art of the transformation era in Poland. He is currently completing a book on the same subject.
BAUMGART ANNA
Anna Baumgart, PhD, post-conceptual artist, director and set designer. Multiple scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Her film, performance and sculptural works have been presented in many exhibitions, including Brooklyn Museum of Art, Jewish Museum in New York, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin, KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem, Casino Luxembourg in Luxembourg, CCA in Moscow, Riga, Tallinn, Zachęta National Art Gallery and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Polin Museum in Warsaw, National Museum in Warsaw, and at video art and documentary art festivals, including Videobrasil in São Paulo, Videonale in Bonn, Monstrainvideo in Milano, European Media Art Festival Osnabrück, New Horizons, Watch Docs. The project “Conquerors of the Sun” (“Zdobywcy Słońca”, 2012) was invited to Manifesta 10, but due to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the artist declined the invitation in protest. The film “Fresh Cherries” (“Świeże wiśnie”, 2010) won the audience award for best video at the Loop festival in Barcelona. Her works are in numerous Polish and international collections, including Hauser & Wirth, FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Upper Silesian Museum in Bytom, European Parliament in Strasbourg, National Museum in Warsaw, NOMUS New Art Museum in Gdansk, Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok. From 2000 to 2006 she ran the Baumgart Café at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, which was an art-activist project and a important place on the map of Warsaw.
DĄBROWSKI JAKUB
Jakub Dąbrowski holds degrees in both law and the history of art. In 2013, he completed his PhD thesis at the Faculty of History of Art at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Artistic Research and Curatorial Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He is the author of the book titled “Cenzura w sztuce polskiej po 1989 roku” (English edition: “Censorship in Polish Art after 1989: Art, Law, Politics,” published by Mosaic Press in 2019).
JAKUBOWICZ RAFAŁ
Rafał Jukobowicz Born 1974 in Poznań (Poland). Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Since 2000 lecturer at the University of Arts in Poznań, currently works as Associate Professor of UAP, leading the Studio of Art in Social Space. Since 2013-2016 lecturer at The Department of Asian Studies (Section of Hebrew, Aramaic and Karaim Studies) of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Published writings in periodicals, art magazines and exhibition catalogues. Since 2005 the member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics). Since 2014 the member of trade union Workers’ Initiative. Since 2015 the member of IKG (Internationales Künstlergremium/International Artists Forum). Since 2017 the member of scientific board of „New Criticism”, polish philosophy periodical.
KEMPIŃSKA LUIZA
Luiza Kempińska PhD, art historian and graphic designer. Graduate of the Graphic Design at the University of Arts in Poznań (PL) and of the Art History at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (PL). Completed her thesis devoted to HIV and AIDS art exhibitions, organized in Poland in the second half of 1980s and in the 1990s, during the political transformations. Took part in a grant financed by the Polish National Science Centre (PI: Prof. Agata Jakubowska, 2015-2017), regarding all-women exhibitions organized in Poland. Member of the research group associated with the “Creative Sick States” project, carried out at the Municipal Gallery Arsenał (GaMA) in Poznań (2018-2019). Teaching assistant in the project “Gender Politics and the Art of European Socialist States” (PI: Prof. Agata Jakubowska, The Getty Foundation, 2019-2020). Currently working on the collection of Prof. Jarosław Kozłowski, in collaboration between the Municipal Gallery Arsenał (GaMA) and the Piotr Piotrowski Center for Research On East-Central European Art.
KOZŁOWSKI JAROSŁAW
Jarosław Kozłowski (*1945 in Śrem, Poland) is one of the leading Polish conceptual artists. In the years 1963-1969, he studied painting at the State Graduate School of Visual Arts in Poznań (today the University of Arts in Poznań), where he also taught (painting and drawing). In the years 1981-1987, he served as the academy`s rector. He has also taught at Statens Kunstakademi in Oslo (1992-1997), Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunste in Amsterdam (1996-2004), Academy Without Walls in Lusaca (1999, 2001), and at the Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (2005-2010). In 1971, together with art theorist Andrzej Kostołowski, he initiated NET, international artist’s collaboration. Between 1972-90, he founded and then ran the Akumulatory Gallery in Poznań, which presented the work of Polish and international avant-garde artists. In 1991-1993, he was programming curator of the gallery and collection of the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. Kozłowski is focusing on Conceptual Art, as well as artworks with text and language. https://archiwumgaleriiakumulatory2.pl
LUBIAK JAROSŁAW
Dr. Jarosław Lubiak is an academic teacher, art theorist, and freelance curator. He works at Art College in Szczecin. From 2014 to 2019, he was the artistic director at Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland. He recently curated: Xawery Wolski: Tangles, Central Museum of Textiles, Łódź, Poland, 2024, Xawery Wolski: Material Poetics, Centre of Polish Sculpture, Orońsko, Poland, 2022. Among many other projects, he curated The Plasticity of the Planet – a long-term program addressing climate catastrophe, including two parallel exhibitions Human-Free Earth and Forensic Architecture: Centre for Contemporary Nature at Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 2019, and co-curated with Ula Tornau and Anna Czaban the Lithuanian and Polish exhibition in two episodes Waiting for Another Coming at Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius and Ujazdowski Castle, 2018-2019. He also curated The State of Life: Polish Contemporary Art within the Global Context in the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 2015. He authored numerous articles and edited several books and catalogs, including Pożegnanie z polityką sarkazmu. Praktyki artystyczne Łukasza Skąpskiego [Farewell to the politics of sarcasm. Artistic practices of Łukasz Skąpski] (Szczecin: 2023); Pandemia: Nauka, Sztuka, Geopolityka [Pandemic: Science, Art, Geopolitics], with Mikołaj Iwański (Szczecin – Poznań: 2018); Katja Strunz, Zeittraum #9 für Władysław Strzemiński (Łódź – Köln: 2011), Museum as a Luminous Objects of Desire (Łódź: 2007).
SHOSTAK JANA
dr Jana Shostak conceptual artist, since 2020 cofounder of help activist movement „Partyzanka” which is considered as extremist in regime Belarus. A realist who demands the impossible. In 2023 she ran for the Polish parliament. Since 2016, she has been consciously using mass media as a tool to speak about art/activism. For combining art and activism, she received the Paszporty Polityki award and nomination for the „Spojrzenia”. In May 2021, she created a protest-monument against the regime’s policy “a minute of scream for Belarus” which appears in more than 120 articles all over the world.
SZREDER KUBA
Kuba Szreder is a researcher, curator, and lecturer at the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw. He cooperates with artistic unions, consortia of postartistic practitioners, clusters of art-researchers, art collectives and artistic institutions in Poland, UK, and other European countries. He is an editor and author of several catalogues, books, readers, book chapters, articles and manifestos, in which he scrutinizes the social, economic, and theoretical aspects of the expanded field of art. Current research interests include conditions of artistic labor, new models of artistic institutions, artistic self-organization, artistic research, postartistic theory and practice. His book “The ABC of the projectariat: living and working in a precarious art world” was published in 2021 by the Manchester University Press and the Whitworth.