Zofia Kulik is a Polish artist based in Łomianki (Warsaw). She studied sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (1965–1971) under Oskar Hansen. After graduating, she co-founded the artistic duo KwieKulik with Przemysław Kwiek (1945–2024), collaborating for 17 years. Their highly politically charged work included performances, activities, installations, objects, and photographs. In response to rejection from both the regime and the Polish neo-avant-garde, they established the Studio of Activities, Documentation, and Propagation (PDDiU), an independent gallery in their home. Within this framework, they organized lectures and exhibitions, documenting Poland’s 1970s–80s artistic landscape.

After their breakup in 1987, Kulik pursued a solo career, developing a meticulous darkroom process using multiple exposures of negatives onto photo paper, achieved through precisely cut stencils. This technique allows her to combine numerous individual images from her vast personal archive into a single work. The 1990s marked a period of emancipation and self-awakening for the artist, reflected in her self-portraiture and use of images as ornamental motifs to express history, politics, and art as a continuum of recurring signs and gestures. Between 1987–1991, she created the Archive of Gestures, a compendium of 700 photographs depicting a naked male model in poses inspired by various visual traditions. Kulik’s work examines the interplay between man and woman, individual and collective, and Poland’s transition from communism to a Catholic state, incorporating symbols of authority and totalitarianism.

Zofia Kulik (*1947 in Wrocław, Poland) presented her works to a wide audience at documenta 12 in Kassel (2007), the 47th Venice Biennale (1997), and Les Rencontres d'Arles (2023). Her work is part of important collections such as Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, and Moderna Museet, and was also included in the reopened permanent exhibition at MoMA New York. Additionally, the KwieKulik Archive (1968–1987), created by Zofia Kulik, is now part of MSN Warsaw’s permanent installation.