Viewing Room

Saturday, 10 May 2025

Zofia Kulik

Zofia Kulik

Light Rose I (Smokes), 2000
From the series Self-portraits
180 x 150 cm
Silver gelatine print

Zofia Kulik started to create monumental, black-and-white photographic compositions after 1987, which brought an end to her collaboration with Przemysław Kwiek as KwieKulik. At this time she started to produce self-portraits. They came as a manifestation of an awakening of identity as an artist. Along with this self-portrait justification came the ornament, which served as a way for Zofia Kulik to untangle her vision of history, politics, and art. She moved towards her avant-garde concept of building an archive – a revolutionary approach that tackles archiving as an essential artistic practice.

Using photographs only from her archive, she developed her own technique of multiple exposures of negatives on photographic paper through precisely cut masks. Kulik's work takes on various forms marked by interlacing rhythms and patterns: from photo carpets through columns, gates, medals, and mandalas to open compositions. Thematically, she focuses on the relationship between men and women, as well as on symbols of power and totalitarianism. Following the continuum of recurring signs and gestures, a further pivotal part of her work is the phenomenon of mass media and its influence on consumers, as well as the continuum of recurring symbols and gestures.