She is born in Warsaw, Poland in 1963 and lives in Warsaw, Trento and Berlin.
Katarzyna Kozyra is a sculptor, photographer, performance artist, filmmaker, author of video installations and artistic actions. She is one of the leading figures of contemporary art who has been widely recognized and awarded for her role in shaping Polish art and culture. Her work has been regularly shown in the international arena.
Kozyra’s works raise the most fundamental issues of human existence: identity and transience, life and death, illness and senility, religion and sex. She explores the area of cultural taboos related to man’s physicality, the stereotypes and forms of behaviour embedded in social life. In each of her works, Kozyra violates these taboos, risking public outcry. Although she is classified as a new media artist, in her art she combines elements of visual arts, theatre, performance, dance and choreography. In 1999, she received an honorable mention at the 48th Venice Biennale for the video installation Men’s Bathhouse in the Polish Pavilion.
Her wide-ranging and diverse oeuvre includes such works as: the Pyramid of Animals (1993), video-installation The Rite of Spring which is thought to be one of the most important artworks of the 20th century or longterm project In Art Dreams Come True (2003- 2008). Since 2012 she has been working on her new project Looking for Jesus, where Kozyra takes the position of a researcher, asks important questions, collects and juxtaposes various stories. Looking for Jesus is a project presenting ways and means of carrying out one’s faith, its place and role in today’s world, and values on which we build our reality. Her works belongs to many public collections : Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Zacheta National gallery, Varsaw, FRAC Lorraine, Metz, MUMOK, Vienna, Hoffmann Sammlung, Berlin…
COLLECTIONS
Sammlung Hoffmann, Berlin (DE)
Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (MUMOK), Vienna (AT)
Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU), Zagreb (HR)
Galleri Image, Aarhus (DK)
Ludwig Museum, Cologne (DE)
Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest (CZ)
Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok (PL)
Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (PL)
Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (PL)
Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (PL)
Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (SI)
Moderna Museet, Stockholm (SE)
49 Nord 6 Est - FRAC Lorraine, Metz (FR)