Zofia Kulik


Zofia Kulik is a Polish artist. She is known primarily for her work in performance and photography.

Career

Kulik studied sculpture at the Fine Arts Academy in Warsaw. She worked with Przemyslaw Kwiek in the 1970s, as part of the Soc Art movement, creating joint works under the name Kwiekulik.
KwieKulik was active between 1971-1987, during which time the duo was well known for performance, films, and photographic works. Their work is linked to the Soc Art movement, also known as conceptualism, the second socialist realism or New Red Art. The two were highly influence by Oskar Hansen, who taught them in Warsaw, and his focus on documentation and production process of works. They often exhibited their work in their own apartment. Their pieces appropriated symbols and imagery of the communist Polish regime at the time.
Following changes to the Polish regime in 1989, Kulik began to work independently, using photographic collage and focusing on self-portraiture.
Kulik has exhibited internationally as a solo artist, including New York and the Venice Biennial.

Works

Kulik's graduation exhibition at the Fine Arts Academy was titled Instead of Sculpture. It was a three-channel slide installation composed of approximately 450 photographs. The photographs document Kulik's activity in her studio as well as the activity of other students around the school. The artist sees the photos as a visual diary, saying "the parallel projection gave an image of three interwoven threads. In the plastic thread: material and spatial transformations, in the life thread: occurrences in time and space and among people from the nearest circle, in the record thread: operations on the slides – the medium of the message."