The Foundation Prize

Foundation Prize 2026 Award Ceremony. Photo: Joanna Wierzbicka.

 

The jury awards the Main Prize to Aneta Grzeszykowska for her latest body of work—Daughter presented at RASTER Gallery.

The project extends her long-standing exploration of identity into the uncanny and ambiguous realm of the artificial body, addressing the tensions between intimacy in close relationships and the demands of social expectations.

 

Daughter is Aneta Grzeszykowska’s latest series of photographs. This time, the artist hides behind a mask depicting her face at the age of fourteen. The act of impersonation has unsettling consequences: the artist becomes her daughter’s sister, her husband’s daughter and her own parents’ granddaughter. Biological time, family relationships and psychological dynamics are all disrupted. Grzeszykowska herself sees an existential paradox in this work: “The hybrid I construct in the Daughter series, composed of the old and young bodies of a single person, is a visualisation of the dissonance in which we are mired—an ambivalent fusion of a child scarred by adulthood and an adult scarred by childhood." [from WGW website]

Aneta Grzeszykowska in the exhibition space. Photo Joanna Wierzbicka.

 

The Second Main Prize is awarded to Rafał Zajko for his work in the exhibition Foreign Body, presented alongside Thom Trojanowski at Coulisse Gallery.

Jury was particularly drawn to the performative quality of Rafał Zajko’s ceramic works and the ambivalence they embody. Particular attention was given to the work Klatka [eng. cage], in which two meanings of the term intersect: a spatial structure that protects both vulnerable organs and the social fabric. 

 

Foreign Body brings together Rafał Zajko and Thom Trojanowski in a shared reflection on what it means to exist on the margin—between places, identities, and states of belonging. The exhibition traces the figure of the outsider not as a fixed position, but as a fluid and creative state. [from WGW website]

Rafał Zajko in the exhibition space. Photo Joanna Wierzbicka.

 

Special Mention is awarded to the E/A Collective (Estera Mrówka, Julek Wierzchowski, Marlena Biczak, Monika Szydłowska, Paweł Krzywdziak, Witold Winek) for the exhibition I'm here and I know what I have to do curated by Maciej Szczęśniak at Pawilon Bliska 12 for creating an engaging exhibition narrative dedicated to printmaking. 

The jury appreciated both the exhibition’s approach to presenting the medium and narrating the stories of its makers, as well as the collective’s self-organized mode of operation. The exhibition presents printmaking as a living and relevant medium, creating a space for exchange and dialogue between artists and audiences.

 

The exhibition I am here and I know what I have to do is an attempt to tell the story of printmaking without actually talking about it. The work of the E/A Collective is characterized above all by the length of the process, a high barrier to entry, painstaking effort, perseverance, failures, constant practice, and repetition—which seems to be a rarity in the age of late capitalism. Artists working in the graphic medium likely spend the most time in a tête-à-tête relationship with their works. The title phrase “I am here and I know what I have to do” is not only a kind of rallying call, but also the essence of the activities carried out in the printmaking studio; artists attempt to step outside their technical comfort zone—which is no easy feat, since the technical process is absorbing, time-consuming, dominant, and possessive. [from WGW website] 

E/A Collective and curator Maciej Szczęśniak. Photo: Joanna Wierzbicka.

 

 

The Foundation's Prize presented during Warsaw Gallery Weekend is awarded by an international jury, recognizing artistic individuals working in Poland whose work is distinguished by the relevance of its topics and an interesting view of contemporary art.  

 

Jury's composition is fixed and consists of foreign curator invited to explore the Polish art scene; a private contemporary art collector; two experts representing a Polish public institution and two representatives of the Foundation.

 

Jury of the Foundation Prize 10th edition:

• Sonia D’Alto, international curator affiliated with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent
• Sylwia Krupa, private collector and founder of the Krupa Art Foundation
• Agnieszka Pindera, Director of Zachęta – National Gallery of Art
• Szymon Żydek, Deputy Director for Programmes at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
• Kamila Bondar, President of the Management Board and Collection Curator at the ING Polish Art Foundation
• Ilona Dzierżanowska, Member of the Board of the ING Polish Art Foundation

 

The works awarded the Main Prize enter the Foundation's collection via purchase. The Special Prize is an honorable mention in the form of a financial award.