Zofia Kulik

Zofia Kulik (b. 1947) is a multimedia artist, regarded as one of the main representatives of critical art in Poland. In 1971 she graduated from the Faculty of Sculpture of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (diploma in the studio of Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz); during her studies she attended the classes of Oskar Hansen, whose theory of Open Form long shaped her thinking about art.

In 1970-1987, together with her husband Przemysław Kwiek, she formed the duo KwieKulik, running in a private flat the unofficial Studio of Activities, Documentation and Dissemination (PDDiU). As pioneers of performance in Poland they realised ephemeral actions, installations, objects, photographs and films, documenting their own work and creating a gigantic archive of the neo-avant-garde. From the end of the 1980s Kulik has worked individually, making elaborate compositions from multiply-exposed black-and-white (and later colour) photographs - hundreds of her own, arranged photographs of models forming decorative ornaments and mandalas.

In her works she takes up the themes of power, totalitarianism, war, the enslavement of the individual and gender relations, using multiplied forms associated with oppression and authoritarianism, drawn from the history of art, documents and television. In 1997 she represented Poland at the 47th Venice Art Biennale, and in 2007 she exhibited at documenta 12 in Kassel; in 1996 she received the Polityka Passport. She lives and works in Łomianki near Warsaw.