Ewa Kuryluk
She is a pioneer of textile installation, painter, photographer, art historian, novelist and poet, and the author of numerous books, written in Polish and English, many of which have been translated into other languages.
Her work can be seen in the National Museums in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and Poznań, as well as in public and private collections in Europe, USA, Latin America and Japan.
On 9 December 1967 her father died suddenly of a heart attack, and in March 1968 the family was further unsettled by the outbreak of anti-Semitism and the emigration of friends, with her brother showing the first signs of mental illness.
Taking advantage of some liberalization under Edward Gierek, she organized an independent international art exhibition, "The Garden of Knowledge" in June 1981, hoping to turn it into a biennial event.
In February 1982, with the aid of a small European Program Exchange grant sponsored by George Soros, she came to the Institute for the Humanities at New York University.
Founded by Richard Sennett, the Institute counted Susan Sontag, the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, and the novelist Edmund White among its members.
In July 1989, after a compromise had been reached between the Polish regime and Solidarity, she visited with her family in Warsaw, renewed contact with her fellow artists and soon resumed her professional activities.
By 1968 she found her own style and iconography with "Human Landscapes", a series of grotesque paintings in uniform, vivid colors, described by the art historian Mieczyslaw Porebski in the following way: "In her pictures astonishing spaces open up or transform into mazes.
Corridors branch out, tunnels cross, city blocks grow into each other, skyscrapers buzz with the hectic business of modern life—bringing to mind a contemporary Tower of Babel, greedy and restless as an anthill".
Figures were removed from their surroundings and set against flat abstract backgrounds, suggestive of a wall or open space with small silhouettes and vignettes sporting around.
She had been experimenting with drawing on loose cloth since 1977 but the idea of monumental textile installation, halfway between frescoed architecture and sculpture, crystallized as she looked at draperies in fabric store windows while walking to work.
The installation mirrored family drama but it was perceived as reflective of the situation in Poland, with Solidarity facing a crackdown, and in reference to human rights abuse in Latin America.
The monumental cloth hall, her largest work to date, was made of cotton walls and columns suspended from the ceiling and bed sheets on the floor with depictions of a couple making love, their bodies larger than life and private parts showing prominently.
There was a smell of scandal and Thomas Frick, reviewing the show for "Art in America", pointed out that exact rendition of private eroticism always borders on the political.
"My Feet", a cotton path with imprints of her foot steps, the left in red expressing her female self, the right in blue acting as her male ego, "talked" to each other while "walking" to the sea on the coral sand beach in Key West.
Taken with the campus and the landscape, she made full use of the scenery changing in seasons and documented her installations in hundreds of photographs, some of which were reproduced by Joyce Carol Oates in her "Ontario Review".
Kuryluk was awarded a grant from the New York Asian Cultural Council in 1991 in recognition of her contribution to the understanding of the mythology of Amaterasu, the Japanese sun goddess, included in her "Veronica" study.
The book is representative of her interests and work, but her "veils" and "shrouds", reminiscent of stained sheets and flayed skins, are a departure from Christian symbolism and belong to body art.
In 2005 she adapted her novel "Encyklopedierotyk" (Encyclopaedia of Love) for the stage, and designed and directed the play as part of the Polish Festival at the Château de la Petite Malmaison.
Na cetce zrenicy (On the pupil's dot, 2004) by Andrzej Titkow is a documentary movie on Kuryluk's life and art made for the Second Program of Polish Television.
Official collateral event organized by the Starak Foundation at the 59th International Art Biennale in Venice; 2024: Meeting on the Seashore, Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot.
Ewa Kuryluk, Secondary Archive: Villa dei Misteri, Embodiment / Personification, Installations: Part I Zeszyty Literackie —Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
