Aneta Szyłak
Aneta Szyłak (6 June 1959, Puck - 31 October 2023) was a curator, art theorist, institution maker and writer.
Aneta Szyłak founded and directed the Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art (1998–2001) in Gdańsk and Wyspa Institute of Art in 2004, a contemporary arts centre for contextual curatorial practice housed in the Gdańsk shipyard, which she directed until 2014. She was responsible for the making of NOMUS (New Art Museum) - a branch of National Museum in Gdańsk (2021). Her history also includes artistic directorship of Alternativa International Visual Arts Festival in Gdańsk (2010-2016). She curated numerous and often groundbreaking contemporary art exhibitions and festivals including: Slaveness at Trafostacja Sztuki, Szczecin (2018), Damage and Loss (2016) at Alternativa 2016, Vernacularity at the Alternativa Festival 2015, Gdańsk, What’s Plain Invites Pattern’ (2015), Alternativa Foundation, Palermo; Hito Steyerl: Abstract (2014), the first solo show in Poland of celebrated German artist Hito Steyerl, Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdańsk; Estrangement (2010), The Field is the Sky Only Backwards (2013) ISCP, New York; Estrangement (2011) Alternativa, Gdańsk, Architectures of Gender: Contemporary Women’s Art in Poland (2003), Sculpture Centre, New York.
Szyłak wrote extensively on contemporary art theory and contemporary artists. Published works include: “Sherko Abbas: The Music of the Bush Era” in Archaic the exhibition catalogue for the Iraq Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (Milan: Mousse, 2017), “Tactics of Arrival/Means of Knowing” in Don’t Shrink me to the Size of a Bullet: the works of Hiwa K (2017) edited by Anthony Downey (Koenig Books & Ibraaz Publishing), “Curating Context” in The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating edited by Jean-Paul Martinon (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). She lectured and worked as a guest tutor at Bard College, the New School, Queen’s College and New York University all in New York, Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem, Art Academy in Helsinki and – as Doctoral Fellow – at the University of Copenhagen. She was a visiting fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art (M KA) in Antwerp and a visiting professor at the Academy of Arts in Mainz. She worked on her PhD project, Curating Context. The Palimpsest on the Quotidian and the Curatorial at Goldsmiths University and the University of Copenhagen. (2023)
- Links
- Website
- Academia.edu
- Tributes: Tomeka Kitliński, Jacek Niegoda, Dorota Monkiewicz (SZUM).
- Wikipedia-PL
