Viewing Room

Wednesday, 04 September 2024

Katarzyna Kozyra

Katarzyna Kozyra

Summertale: Snow White, 2008
Archival pigment print
105 x 70 cm

Kozyra is Poland’s most famous female artist. In the 1990s, she and artists Artur Żmijewski and Paweł Althamer started the critical art movement. From the beginning, Kozyra broke social taboos like nudity, old age, and death, making her controversial in conservative Polish society. Her performances and interactive events challenge traditional artist-audience boundaries, while her videos tackle key human issues such as identity and transgression.

In Art Dreams Come True is a multimedia project linking visual, musical, and performance art. Begun in August 2003, Kozyra used her first DAAD stipend to learn opera singing and makeup artistry, marking a significant shift towards new performance art, all documented on video. Summertale is the final piece in the series. It unites the three protagonists in a final fantasy, tying together the series’ themes. In a fantastical garden, female dwarves find three giant mushrooms, from which Gloria Viagra, the Maestro, and Kozyra emerge. The dwarves initially welcome them but become suspicious, eventually poisoning the Maestro and killing both the Maestro and Gloria, warning Kozyra, "…They are men. They are evil.”