Malgorzata Kazmierczak

Malgorzata Kazmierczak (born 1979 in Krakow,  Poland) holds a Ph.D. in History and is the author of many critical articles about contemporary art, especially related to performance art. Vice-president of AICA International since 2021 and Vice-president of AICA Poland since 2020. Between 2011 and 2014 she was also a managing editor of the scholarly journal Art & Documentation. Since 2011 she has been a co-editor of an English language portal www.livinggallery.info, a member of the Art & Documentation Association in Łódź and AICA, an independent curator and organizer of many international art events in Poland since 1996. Between 2014 and 2016 she was a Director of the City Gallery of Kalisz. Between 2016 and 2017 a Director of a Library at the Academy of Fine Art in Szczecin, Poland, an Assistant Professor and a Chief Editor of the Publishing House at the Faculty of Painting and New Media of the Academy of Art in Szczecin. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Art of the Pedagogical University of Krakow, Poland. She is also active in theory and documentation of performance art.

Statement:

Performance art is my passion. This is the result of contact I have had with hundreds of performance artists from around the world and it started with my live participation in the organization of the first of the annual performance art festival “Castle of Imagination”. These festivals have presented almost 400 artists from 35 countries since 1993. Active participation in many performance art festivals (as a reviewer, as photo and video documenter, producer and translator) allows me to recognize performance artists and performance art styles. Working as managing editor of the scholarly journal Art and Documentation allows me to keep contact with art historians and theoreticians who focus on performance art, as well as to keep track of the intellectual reflection on it. For two years I have edited the English-language portal www.livinggallery.info in which texts by performance artists and art critics on the theme of live art are published from all over the world. I have organized numerous performance art events. I am also a former chair of the Foundation for the Promotion of Performance Art “Kesher”.

Performance art is for me an innovative art genre of enormous power of expression. Through the curating of this work, I would like to underline this belief by the presentation of risk-taking artistic events around the world. The nature of performance art, which is an art with no rules, requires a great deal of creativity in its presentation, organization and the discussing of it. I see the presentation of performance art in the context of an art institution as involving: encounters with imaginative individuals, directness, experiment, challenging the context of space, social, political and cultural issues. Working outside of the institutional comfort zone. Highlighting the passion of creation. Inviting a variety of attitudes and openness. Verification of opinions and ideas. Observing the contemporary and exploring the history of performance art. Documentation and reflection.

Malgorzata Kazmierczak

My academia.edu page