Katarzyna Kozyra, Exhibition
15.11.11 - 15.01.12, opening: 14.11., at 6 p.m
National Museum in Krakow - Main Building, al. 3 Maja 1, Poland

Nearly twenty years after Katarzyna Kozyra, one of the most interesting and well-known Polish artists of the past two decades, made her debut, the National Museum in Krakow is presenting
a monographic exhibition of her works. It includes, amongst others, her Bathhouse and Men’s Bathhouse, Blood Ties, The Rite of Spring and Casting, as well as a selection of films from her
In Art, Dreams Come True cycle.

Kozyra’s name has not only come to stand for critical art and contemporaneousness, but has also become synonymous with scandal and incomprehension. Her Pyramid of Animals thrust contemporary art into the full glare of the spotlight of public debate when, thanks to the manipulations of the media, a heated, nationwide discussion flared up. The voices not only of critics, but also of representatives of various milieux, were raised in dispute over the diploma project of a young artist studying under Professor Grzegorz Kowlaski. From the very outset, then, the public, either directly, as visitors to the exhibition, or indirectly, stirred up by the media, were drawn into the sphere of Kozyra’s works and, at one and the same time, her life. In her case, the two are indissolubly fused.

Katarzyna Kozyra, sculptress and creator of video installations, films and performance art, was born in 1963 and lives in Berlin and Warsaw. She studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts’ Department of Sculpture. Her work engages with the most profound problems of human existence; identity, transformation and death. She moves amongst the spheres of cultural taboos relating to human corporeality, among the stereotypes and behaviours encoded in the life of society. Transgressing them in all of her works, she thus exposes herself to public criticism.
In 1999, one of her video installations, Men’s Bathhouse, received an honourable mention at the 48th International Biennial of Visual Art in Venice.