Kamila Wolszczak

The Cartographies of Matter exhibition explores the relations formed between bodies and matter through movement. Part of Kamila Wolszczak’s artistic research on speculative artefacts, the works presented form paths and points of traces to experiment with the materiality of public space within the gallery space. The accelerated rhythm of life in cities has turned them into core grounds for neoliberal politics; our way we move and experience our surroundings becomes more and more individualist. New physical and conceptual connections cannot emerge spontaneously, while relating to other human or more-than-human bodies and structures is deemed almost unnecessary. At the same time, the ecological and social dimensions of our movement are highly overlooked. How can we re-imagine our co-existence within the urban environment? Kamila Wolszczak’s research suggests speculation as a counter-practice to reimagine our collective being within the urban environment. The visual artist works with a variety of media and participatory processes, using the practice of walking as the means for deeper exploration. She reads the surroundings of public space as a scenography of human traces and non-human signs waiting to be translated. Her focus is on imaginaries that act as social tools for new possibilities to emerge. The artist works with combinations of organic matter to other natural or artificial materials such as clay, plastic and glue. The sense of touch works as a guide into experiencing, understanding and co-creating. Driven through curiosity and wander, she proposes an open-ended approach to being with(in) our surroundings by engaging with them in unexpected ways. This alternative practice of cartography proposes a deeper questioning and reflection on the politics of human movement. The exhibition aspires to create a symbolic space for reflection; an encounter with the aesthetics of waste, dirt, rupture. The narrative revolves around sculptural representations meant to trigger and invite viewers to critically navigate space. The works presented are formed through literal and metaphorical traces left behind; they are references to the overlooked and call for a shift in our perception. To follow various materials that are socially perceived as dirt is opening a new door to imaginary worlds every single time; new paths of possibilities for collective storytelling. Kamila Wolszczak

Limburg Biennale

A Tactile walk begins somewhere between imagination, touch and movement. It happens between warm skin and an unexpected form. It transforms internal imaginations into physical encounters to build a temporary relationship with public landscapes. Tactile walk is a method to communicate with other-than-human beings, found, unknown materials, traces and unseen artefacts in public space. Tactile walk is a research-led practice created by visual maker - Kamila Wolszczak and ​​Florinda Camilleri, movement practitioner. Both graduated MA Performing Public Space and have supported each other in experimentation and development since then. Tactile walk happened as a performative, collective drift in Karel de Stouteplein, Charlois Rotterdam.

created in context of the exhibition Affect aliens in Gabriel Caruana Foundation Malta, collaboration with F. Camilleri

Exhibition "Fingers and Treasures" consists of a ceramic installation, photo documentation of the process and a storytelling created in cooperation with children from the Kindcentrum, the primary school Vindplaats in Amsterdam, The Netherland. The installation was presented in December 2023 as the outcome of a three months artist in residency at residency space Gastatelier next to the school. The installation contains the hands and fingers of children imprinted in clay showing the touch. It is also an archive of imprints and traces from items found in the neighborhood. The whole composition is united by ceramic fingers, combined with the finds - the titleholders’ treasures and with clay.

created in context of the exhibition Affect aliens in Gabriel Caruana Foundation Malta, collaboration with F. Camilleri

created in context of the exhibition Affect aliens in Gabriel Caruana Foundation Malta, collaboration with F. Camilleri

y artistic research during the MA Performing Public Space was titled ‘Invisible relations: more-than-human perspective within public space’. This research investigates interdisciplinary methods including subjective walks, assemblages, texts, audio-storytelling, interventions and participatory performance. The showcase of the research contains an installation with Instax photos I took of the broken artifacts* their imprints in the clay. I connected those pictures and sculptures with speculative texts which I wrote about my view on the live of artifacts. I found the artifacts on desire paths** in the urban environment of Scheveningen in The Hague. The aim of my research was to answer the question, how to reveal the agency of invisible human traces in public space? *Artifacts are broken elements of artificial items made/given shape by humans, left in public space. **Desire path or short cut path are physical spaces created by human walking, an endless human desire and need-driven intervention, act of unconscious co-creation, urbanism failure.

Walk with Speculative Artifacts in The Hague and Amsterdam is a collective walk in urban public space. The aim of this project is to reflect on alternative methods of experiencing the environment. The idea is to guide participants through the methods of tracing matter in various places and see how they interpretate artifacts. Each walkshop begins with an exercise to describe your feeling as a participant and to relate these feelings to the place. The exercise helps to focus on the here and now. The next step was to walk in silence separately and to focus on details around you and on the presence in space. The last part of the walkshop was to find somewhere in the environment broken artifacts. With these artifacts the participants create a temporary, imaginary relation by imprinting the artifact traces in clay and tell the stories with the participants. The result was to observe the relationships with artifacts, nature, the horticulture and the infrastructure. We were using our senses to see the space differently than we are used to. This opens up the speculative stories about the artifacts. The feedback from participants brought new perspectives. An example of a reaction was: “A wilting flower is as fabricated as a lost pacifier. And it is not just humans who produce the artifacts in the park. Worms create cathedrals in the rotting trees and generate by breaking down what has outlived its time. Everything is reshuffled and the story continues: the objects have many pasts and many futures lodged in them.” The group conclusion was that there is so much more to be found through imagination and reconstruction than if we had witnessed the events we are researching in the first place. Co-created in collaboration with Performance Site The Hague, VOX-POP University of Amsterdam, Zone2Sources Amsterdam, TAAK Stichting and Oosterwold community in Almere Photos by Tasha Arlova and Tania Esteves Fernandes Cardoso

Installation based on dust and plastic collected in first 6 month of lockdown. It brings to the viewer matter of invisible. 'Wolszczak’s work confronts disgust, contemplating nature through its by-products while prettying up the concept of “dirt.” This new body of work, You see things I imagined, expands the artist’s performance based oeuvre into a sculptural representation. Translucent materials contrast with collected artifacts, juxtaposing “cleanliness” with an encrusted patina. While the context of global germophobia informs the inclusion of single use gloves and the collection of natural specimens.' Sam Stevens

This work is based on findings pieces during long walks by the sea. It represents a non-human anthropomorphism, a assemblage of remains that try to speak to us.

This work shows gloves animated by dirt. Hands frozen in the work movement.

he performance took place in the presence of five participants and many people connected online. During the performance I built up a sense of presence in the place I was currently in. I stuck fragments of tape to found furniture, fabrics and objects. I collected traces and sediments from them and told the audience about Wrocław, its history and character. From the traces on the tape I created a curtain, writing the place on a sticky plane opposite the eye of the camera and all the spectators, at a safe distance.

Saved in dust was a participatory performance repeated for various groups during the This Art Fair in Amsterdam. I've confronted daily life details, disgust, and man with their by-products while making more noticeable the concept of dirt. During this performance, I was an operator, conductor and moment catcher. I've referred to the seemingly irrelevant micro world saved in dust. The invisible becomes visible, all together on a plastic layer. This performance was the continuation of the growing visual archive of my collection of presence, together with participants to embody the shared time.

This is fifth Children Art Gallery witch I have made in Europe with children. Together with Amelia, Nai & Julia we have made the unique figures from random objects found in the neighbourhood in Zuid Amsterdam. They are works of art with stories. The exhibition is called “Things have legs” and is a summary of the joint workshops. Now the abandoned old window and the objects from the neighbourhood are important and functional again! The exhibition is outdoor, open 24h/7 till the end of June 2020. View our artworks and listen to who our figures are.https://soundcloud.com/art-ambulance/kinder-kunstgalerie-audio-gids-nl

SUWaczek (zipper) was the smallest art gallery in Breda invented by Kamila Wolszczak and created with children. Each of the young artists collected 75 objects, small treasures. These treasures have common stories from Poland and the Netherlands, and they come from two cultures with which these young artists are very close. The objects were transformed into bilingual, colourful heroes of everyday life.

The core of the performance is based on a game, fight, relationship and sisterhood between women. Wolszczak & Borkowska (PARAperformance duo) used the words based on ID details, statement of Greta Thunberg, love songs and various body/objects relations. They build up the new context layers and mixed with specific elements as a wooden rocking horse, beach ball with world print, as symbols of childhood, colonization and rap. There is a interactive part of the circle formed by Silesian coal which refers to climate changes and ignorance.

The main theme of this year's Malta Generator – the urban section of Malta Festival Poznań – is "doubting locality". One of the main ways of working with this issue are the "The architecture of relations" residencies implemented by artistic duos on Poznan estates, which were constructed in 1930s as a part of a social residential estates program. Inhabited until this day, they are the epitome of architectural projects the creators of which believed that engineering designs have the power to change social relations, elevating them above merely designing residential buildings. This seemingly utopian thinking has for a time been a dream put to action and offered the opportunity to have relatively decent living conditions to those who were for various reasons excluded. The residencies are held by duos of artists from various parts of Poland: Michał Mioduszewski and Arek Pasożyt, Kamila Wolszczak and Marcin Zalewski, Karolina Włodek and Adam Martyniak. Marcin Zalewski and Kamila Wolszczak became fascinated with the space of the Social Welfare Estate constructed in 1933. For over a dozen of years it has been a scene of an ongoing feud with the city regarding the purchase of land with preferential prices for long term inhabitants. The artists and the locals bring back one of the empty houses to life, where they created a Micro-museum of Social Remembrance "The Sarmatian Home". The museum has been open during the Night of Museums on 19 May. The artistic project will finish on 17 June with a picnic during the Lotaryńska Street Celebration Day. The "Sarmatian Home" design is a response to the lack of communal spaces, where inhabitants could work together. It is also an attempt to look at the past, the present and the future of the Social Welfare Estate, which increasingly more often becomes an object of interest for developers, who strive to introduce their own brand of "exoticism" to the location. Confrontation with personal objects belonging to the inhabitants presented on the exhibition aims to return the estate its rightful place in the communal memory of Poznanians. Creating a grass-roots institution presenting the stories and the objects belonging to the inhabitants of the estate is only one element of the residency. The artists also planned workshops for children from the local primary school no.48, there will be classes devoted to urban planning and the architecture of the estate. The effects of the teaching about the heritage of the Welfare Care Estate an

Przesuwanie (Move!), 20 editions. This is a series of creative, subjective walks in neighbourhoods of Wrocław and Poznań, PL. The concept is to get lost in the city and find the way with strangers in public space. Exchange knowledge about the district, meet the people who are joining the walks and talk about new ideas. Thanks to these episodes, people started to invest in setting up local activities, created new walks in others cities and people became new local storytellers exploring their talents and knowledge about the places.

Olivia Schellander and Kamila Wolszczaks’ collaboration derives from their individual interests in the topic of orality, storytelling and the process of (oral) transformation. For Silence Matters they choose to work with chewable material and gum as a mediator to create a duo performance.

PUK is another part of the SUW project (Samonośne Uniwersalne Wystawy, Eng. Self-Supporting Universal Exhibitions) initiated in Wroclaw in 2014 by Kamila Wolszczak. SUW originates from the idea of independent curatorial works set in private spaces and directed at different social groups. Moreover, it is supported by the fact that the decisions concerning the programme are made together by the artists and organizers. All the activity within SUW takes place outside the institutional spaces and share a set of universal rules. This time the project was carried out in a farm property, in the centre of Kumow Plebanski - a small village in Lubelskie voivodeship. The plot has been abandoned since 2010, after the death of the last inhabitants of the Puk family, who were also the ancestors of the author of the project. The title of the project refers directly to this family name.