Collection

Anthropology blends with art history in Joanna Malinowska’s work. The artist produces her objects using natural materials typical for primitive cultures, which she then confronts with forms associated with avant-garde artworks. Some of her pieces could well be mistaken for tribal handicraft. The series of miniature tunics was inspired by objects produced in South America. Feathers arranged in abstract patterns on a piece of linen resemble a utility item. The artist consciously uses the ambiguity of similarities between artworks and objects of everyday use originating from non-European cultures, deliberating on the need for professionalising and institutionalising these fields of human activity.

Creator of videos, sculptures, audio installations, and performances. A sculpture graduate of Rutgers and Yale in the US, music and anthropology are vital to her work. She reinterprets pieces by 20^th-century composers, confronting them with other cultural contexts. While Malinowska appears to allude to scientific quests (she took a journey in the footsteps of one of the first Inuit culture researchers, for example), she prefers to seek ambiguity rather than normativity or rationality in the similar objects, myths and people she discovers across multiple cultures. She represented Poland at the 56^th Venice Art Biennale in 2015, jointly with artist C.T. Jasper (formerly known as Christian Tomaszewski). She lives and works in New York.