Artur Zmijewski Born 1966 in Warsaw, Poland

Lives and works in Warsaw, Poland

They are concerned with the disruption of the human body and of cognitive functioning in extreme cases such as illness or disability, while also examining mechanisms of memory and collective trauma. These works are usually constructed as interviews or documentary films, which are at times provocative and often direct to the point of cruelty. The body is the basic medium through which Zmijewski communicates his philosophy concerning power and resistance: the naked soldiers in the drill yard, the actors in the gas chambers and the various handicapped people are all exposed to one form or another of social experimentation. In his work Repetition, for instance, which was exhibited at the Polish Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Zmijewski reconstructed the well-known prisoner experiment performed by the psychologist Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University in 1971. This experiment, which is considered to be a milestone in social psychology, examined behavior in prison cells and proved that the legitimization of inhuman behavior led to blind obedience and a total abandonment of preexisting values. His sweeping conclusion was that authority is corruptive and produces evil.

In the video work Them (2007), which was exhibited at Documenta 12, Zmijewski brought together in a single space representatives of four extreme ideological groups: a group of conservative Catholic women, a fundamentalist Jewish youth group, a group of left-wing civil rights activists and representatives of the nationalist organization “All Poland Youth”. In the course of this encounter, which was documented on video, Zmijewski orchestrated what could be defined either as a game or as a social experiment. According to the rules, which were set forth by the artist, participants were asked to give expressions to their ideological tenets through the use of images and other graphic symbols, and to use these graphic signs in order to entertain a dialogue. The workshop was composed of four meetings involving numerous arguments and attempts at conviction; the level of visual and verbal violence grew increasingly intense with every meeting – culminating with the opposing groups setting fire to each other’s symbols. In this work, Zmijewski exposes the mechanism underlying conflicts that are based on fanatic beliefs. He produces an allegory for processes of symbolization and for their patterns of action and influence on human consciousness. The model for this experiment was based on a game he himself participated in as a student – which was designed to expose pathological tendencies stemming from hatred through the use of visual tools.

Works by Żmijewski have been exhibited internationally since the early 1990s. In 2022 he had a solo exhibition When Fear Eats the Soul at Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (PAC), Milano, followed by the publication of a comprehensive monograph. He has held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje (2021), MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow (2020), Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2019), and Beursschouwburg in Brussels (2018). Earlier exhibitions include presentations at the Museum for History of Medicine in Riga (2017), Museo de Arte Zapopan in Guadalajara (2013), CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw (2012), the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto (2011), the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2009), and CCA Wattis in San Francisco (2005).

His participation in group exhibitions likewise spans international events: the Baltic Triennial in Vilnius (2021), documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens (2017), and documenta 12 in Kassel (2007). Earlier highlights include the 51st Venice Biennale, where he represented Poland with Repetition (2005), and Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt am Main (2002). His film Them (2007) was also presented at documenta 12. From 2007 to 2008, Żmijewski was a DAAD Artist-in-Residence in Berlin, during which he developed the Democracies series. In 2012, he curated the 7th Berlin Biennale, further establishing his role as a key figure in critical contemporary art discourse.