Zofia Kulik Works

Zofia Kulik’s photographs are a psychic collage of the self. Inspired by eroticism, feminism, and the political and social developments of postwar Poland, her work offers a radical critique of not only what it means to be an artist and a woman, but of what it means to be human. Featuring her most pivotal series—­including The Splendor of Myself—this expansive publication charts Kulik’s rich and varied career, from earlier collaborations to the development of her solo work.

Born in 1947 in Wroclaw, Kulik studied sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from 1965 to 1971. Shortly after graduating, she formed the artistic duo KwieKulik with her then partner Przemyslaw Kwiek. Out of their home, the couple founded the Studio of Documentation and Propagation Activities (PDDiU), where they created avant-­garde films, photographs, and sculptures, as well as performances, installations, and interventionist texts.

After separating in 1987, Kulik expressed a newfound desire to show her work in museums and institutions. Subsequently developing the black-and-­white photomontages for which she is now most famous, Kulik would combine complex patterns with often hundreds of images. Painstakingly detailed and physically imposing, these images reflect an artist committed to exploring the murky terrains of the psyche. Bringing together these critical works alongside Kulik’s lesser-known—­but no less radical—projects, this retrospective compiles texts from leading writers to provide a much-­needed introduction to one of Poland’s most important living artists.