Zofia Kulik

Zofia Kulik and Joseph Beuys, Beuys’ flat at Drakeplatz, Düsseldorf, 1981. Photo: Przemysław Kwiek.

Zofia Kulik was born in 1947 in Wroclaw, Poland. She grew up and studied in Warsaw, where she graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Academy of Fine Arts. From 1971 she worked with Przemysław Kwiek as a duo called KwieKulik.

Together they carried out "actions" covering the whole spectrum of artistic work, such as process and ephemeral art. They proposed educational and institutional programmes and also documented other artists' works. They set up the Studio of Activities, Documentation and Dissemination (PDDiU) in their home. At the end of the 1980s, their common life and artistic cooperation came to an end, and Kwiekulik ceased to exist.

After that, Zofia Kulik began to work individually and her practice took a different direction. "Now I am fascinated by the closed form, I want to be in the museum" - she explained. She began to create monumental black and white photographic compositions based on multiple exposures of photo negatives from her extensive archive.

The photo-collages took various forms, from photo-carpets, columns, gates, medals to open/endless compositions, such as the series From Siberia to Cyberia. It was these works that brought Kulik great success and popularity (1996 Paszport Polityki, 1997 Venice Biennale, 2007 documenta in Kassel). Kulik's works can be found in many collections in Poland and abroad (Art Museum in Łódź, National Museum in Poznań, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, MoMA New York, Moderna Museet). Since 2008 she has been concentrating on her own practice and the archiving of KwieKulik's work. (2024)