Wanda Czełkowska: Art Is Not Rest

Wanda Czełkowska (1930–2021) was a key figure of the Polish avant-garde whose work remained almost unnoticed by art history until recently. She started her career near the end of the 1950s in Kraków and played an important role in the development of conceptual art in Poland. As a member of the famous Second Kraków Group, she maintained an independent voice and never fully engaged in the artistic discourse and social life of the group. Those who knew Czełkowska often refer to her as someone who trod her own separate path.

Her oeuvre was driven by a profound belief in the intelligence and authenticity of art, which led her beyond formal or political considerations: “art uncovers truths of the world”, she wrote in her notes. In this sense, the artist was a worthy heir of the avant-garde thought, never giving in to postmodern disillusion. Unlike her contemporaries Alina Szapocznikow and Magdalena Abakanowicz, her work remains largely unknown outside of Poland.

The exhibition of Wanda Czełkowska at Muzeum Susch curated by Matylda Taszycka is the first retrospective of the artist outside Poland providing a comprehensive overview of her artistic career and a thought-provoking narrative highlighting her original contribution to the development of post-war sculpture in Europe.

The one-day symposium devoted to the work of Czełkowska, organised as part of the exhibition, and accompanying the artist’s monograph, aims to enhance the international reception of the artist’s oeuvre and present it within a broader context open to new enriching interpretations.

Participants
Mathieu Copeland, curator, lecturer and publisher. Senior Lecturer at Leeds School of Arts, part of Leeds Beckett University.
David Crowley, curator, researcher. Head of the School of Visual Culture, National College of Art and Design, Dublin
Dorota Grubba-Thiede, art historian and critic, curator. Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.
Amelia Jones, Robert A. Day Professor at Roski School of Art & Design, USC
Ewa Opałka, curator and art critic
Charlotte Matter, art historian, postdoc researcher at the University of Zurich
Agnieszka Sosnowska, curator of the discursive programme at Muzeum Susch
Anna Szyjkowska-Piotrowska, art theoretician, philosopher and linguist. Associate Professor at Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw
Agnieszka Tarasiuk, curator, culture manager, researcher. Head of the Collection Department of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Matylda Taszycka, curator of Wanda Czełkowska: Art Is Not Rest exhibition
Sarah Wilson, art historian, curator. Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art

Admission free upon registration.

For more information about the programme and web-stream, please follow this link.
The symposium will be held in English, and will be recorded and available to watch online on our website.
For more information about the monograph book, visit here.

Program

10am
Greeting: Grażyna Kulczyk, founder of Muzeum Susch, Chairwoman of the Board of Art Stations Foundation CH

Introduction: Agnieszka Sosnowska, curator of discursive programme at Muzeum Susch, and Matylda Taszycka, curator of Wanda Czełkowska: Art Is Not Rest

Part I, Wanda Czełkowska: “Sculpture Is an Intellectual Event”

Lecture: Dorota Grubba-Thiede, “Wanda Czełkowska: ‘For Me, Space Is a Person’”

Lecture: Amelia Jones, “Heads that Cannot See: The ‘Eliminated’ Sculpture of Wanda Czełkowska”

Lecture: Mathieu Copeland, “The Time Travel of an Anti-concept: Wanda Czełkowska, ‘Absolute Elimination of Sculpture as a Notion of Shape’”

Panel discussion: “Crossing the Boundaries of Sculpture: Wanda Czełkowska and Transformations of Art”
Participants: David Crowley, Mathieu Copeland, Sarah Wilson, Agnieszka Tarasiuk
Moderator: Agnieszka Sosnowska

1–2pm: Lunch break

Part II, Wanda Czełkowska: “A Third Kind of Human Being”

Lecture: Matylda Taszycka, “Self-mythologies: Facing Wanda Czełkowska’s Self-portrait”

Lecture: Ewa Opałka, “The Female Subject or the Third Sex? Selected Aspects of Wanda Czełkowska’s Oeuvre from a Feminist Perspective”

Panel discussion: “Face, Head, and After-Face in Czełkowska’s Art: Matter, Meanings, and Interpretations”
Participants: Ewa Opałka, Charlotte Matter, Matylda Taszyck; Moderator: Anna Szyjkowska-Piotrowska

Online guided tour: Wanda Czełkowska: Art Is Not Rest exhibition