Berlin, Niemcy / Berlin, Germany
24–25.10.2025
Krzysztof Leon Dziemaszkiewicz
Performance artist, painter and creator of objects. Born in 1963 in Lipiany, from 1982 to 2014 he lived in Sopot, where he actively participated in the artistic and cultural life of the region, starting from the period of his studies at the University of Gdańsk, through his involvement in theaters: Teatr Ekspresji, SFINKS and Teatr Patrz Mi Na Usta, to his individual performances. At present he lives and works in Berlin.
Dziemaszkiewicz has also been creating paintings and objects for many years. He works using an original technique he calls “tape art,” in which the basic tool and material is adhesive tape. Tape and the artist’s body have always been important elements in his work, so tape art has been a natural consequence and evolution in the artist’s performances.
Dziemaszkiewicz’s transgenic and transsexual work is intended to connect opposites and raise questions about the boundaries between humanity and animalism. His work taps into premonitions, instincts and emotions, and its overriding principle is sincerity. His uncompromising stance in the face of social constraints results in a unique language of artistic expression. The artist is what he wants himself and his work to be – in the name of the freedom of every human being. Dziemaszkiewicz’s art has been shown in the USA, China, France, Germany, Turkey, the Czech Republic and Canada, among others. He fully identifies himself with his work.
Anna Kalwajtys
Anna Kalwajtys is a visual artist and performance practitioner whose work explores the intersections of corporeality, biology, cultural identity, and the exclusion of vulnerable individuals from society. Her performances often confront existential thresholds and liminal conditions. She has participated in numerous performance art festivals across Poland, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Canada, the USA, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Greenland.
Kalwajtys studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk from 1999 to 2005, graduating from the Intermedia Studio led by Professor Grzegorz Klaman. Between 2004 and 2007, she continued her education in Intermedia at the University of the Arts in Poznań, earning her diploma with distinction under the guidance of Professor Jan Berdyszak (Sculpture and Spatial Actions Studio) and Professor Izabella Gustowska (Performance and Multimedia Studio). In 2006, she studied at the Department of Animation and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. In 2015, she received a PhD in Fine Arts for her doctoral project BBL. Bios – The Body Laboratory.
She also holds postgraduate qualifications in psychology from the University of Warsaw (2020) and in art therapy with elements of pedagogical therapy from the Maria Grzegorzewska University (2023).
Aleksandra Kubiak
Aleksandra Kubiak (b. 1978 in Lubań) is a visual and performance artist, creator of films and spatial forms, and a lecturer. Her work explores the social efficacy of art and its psychological dimensions.
Since 2014, she has been developing an autobiographical series that merges themes of mourning and trauma with formal experimentation in film, positioned at the intersection of performance, documentary, and theater. She collaborates with actors, writes screenplays, and directs her own productions. In parallel, since 2011, she has been creating empathetic, relational actions with invited participants, staging performances based on her own texts.
In 2023, BWA Zielona Góra published Zrobię serce / I’ll Make a Heart, edited by Anna Łazar. The book offers an in-depth reflection on Kubiak’s individual practice, accompanied by psychoanalytic commentary on her work.
From 2001 to 2013, she co-founded the influential performance duo Grupa Sędzia Główny with Karolina Wiktor. The group’s works are included in the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, among others. Kubiak resumed her solo practice in 2010 with the film Dolce Vita (2011).
In 2016, she earned her Doctor of Arts degree from the University of Arts in Poznań under the supervision of Prof. Izabella Gustowska and in collaboration with Prof. Marek Wasilewski. Since 2017, she has taught at the Institute of Visual Arts at the University of Zielona Góra. She lives in Zielona Góra, where she collaborates with the Salony Foundation and the BWA Gallery.
Magdalena Mellin
Visual artist, performer, painter, author and poet. Born in 1984, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk in 2015 and continued her education with a scholarship at Sabancı University in Istanbul. She also participated in the two-year program “Visual Art and Research” at the Dutch Art Institute in the Netherlands. From 2013 to 2017, she was a resident of the Artists’ Colony, where as part of the open studio formula she began her artistic collaboration with Monika Wińczyk, which continues to this day. She presented her performance project Dialogues Not/Conducted, Letters Not/Sent at the Month of Performance Art in Berlin (2015) and at the Festival of New Theater in Rzeszów (2015), among others.
She is the author of What Happens Behind This Wall, Stays Behind This Wall (2012) and Skaryfik(s)a))cja (2018). Her poetic texts have also been published on the Splesz website, in the Warsaw magazine Wakat or in the collection of manifestos entitled Death of Patriarchy. Manifestos – The Revolution is Now!
In 2018, together with Kajetan Hajkowicz and Hubert Wińczyk, she created the Un-Titled performance shown at Teatr Ósmego Dnia in Poznań as part of the “OFF: Premieres/Presentations” competition, which was continued at the Malta Festival in 2020.
Since 2021, together with Andrzej Masko, Mellin has been organizing Dying – cyclical meetings revolving around performance at Klub Farby in Poznań. In 2023, she participated in the “A-Kumulacje 2023” competition, part of the Kalisz Art Biennial, and the 19 th Biennial of Poznań.
In her practice she tries to capture the processual and physical aspect of the image in the context of experience, memory and imagination.
Joanna Pawlik
She lives and works in Kraków, where she works across performance, painting, drawing, photography, and video.
She graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, and in 2018 obtained a PhD in fine arts from the Faculty of Art at the University of the National Education Commission in Kraków.
Pawlik’s work navigates the intersection of social mechanisms of exclusion and intimate, personal spaces of perception. In her highly critical pieces – such as the video Balans (Balance) and the performance series Schody (Stairs) – she tests the limits of her own body, probes the notion of social norms, and frequently addresses disability in a provocative, subversive manner.
Through her artistic practice, she confronts enduring taboos around the bodies and sexuality of people with disabilities, or those who deviate from dominant standards of normativity.
She collaborates with leading contemporary art institutions in Poland, including the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków MOCAK, Wrocław Contemporary Museum, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery in Kraków, the Kronika Center for Contemporary Art in Bytom, the Arsenał Municipal Gallery in Poznań, and the Zamek Culture Center in Poznań.
Anna Steller
Performer, dancer and choreographer, mother of three children. Born in 1979 in Gdańsk, she began performing on stage in 1993 at the Dada von Bzdülow Theater. She has been creating performances and shows for many years. As a performer, she focuses mainly on the clarity and sincerity of her message using radical artistic solutions. She is interested in collaborating with artists with different interests and achieving a new and fresh quality through negotiation in the field of art. She has been exploring the interdisciplinary nature of dance and performance for years, trying to understand and communicate important contents and concepts to the public.
She is a member of Plenum Osób Opiekujących Się, which gathers people working in art and caring for others, with whom she won the main prize at the 7th Gdańsk Art Biennale in 2023. She has presented her works at the Łaźnia Center for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk, Galeria Miejska in Gdańsk, the Halo Kultura Gallery in Gdynia, the Kronika Center for Contemporary Art in Bytom, the State Art Gallery in Sopot, the Arts Station Foundation in Poznań, the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław, at the Maat Festival in Lublin, Malta Festival in Poznań, “Telling the Baltic” Festival in Karlskrona, Miami Performance International Festival, L1 Contemporary Dance Festival in Budapest, “Body-Mind” festivals in Warsaw, “Four Days” and Festival of Naked Form (both in Prague) and in Berlin.
She has received numerous grants and awards, including “Dance Web” at the Impulstanz dance festival in Vienna (2003), the Visegrad Fund scholarship (2014), the Special Award of the Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship for outstanding merits in the field of artistic creativity, and the Award of the Mayor of Gdańsk for Young Creators for her performance Good Girl Killer. In addition, in 2014 she received a scholarship from the Alternative Dance Academy of the Art Station Foundation in Poznań. She has twice received a grant from the Minister of Culture and “National Heritage.
Tomasz Szrama
(b. 1970 in Poland) graduated in 1998 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland. Currently he lives in Helsinki, Finland. Szrama has practiced action art since 1993 and contributed actively to the development of Finnish performance art. Characteristic features of his work are the use of spectators, active participation of the audience and improvisation. Such a strategy embeds his presentations into the tradition of understanding performance art as a process art, where the very moment of creation is essential.
For the last 20 years Szrama has been regularly performing in numerous events and festivals across Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, North and South America, including venues such as the Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid, Göteborgs Konsthall, Scandinavia House in New York, Bangkok Art Centre, Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, Helsinki Kunsthalle, Ulster University in Belfast, Adam Art Gallery for Victoria University in New Zealand etc.
Further, over the past 17 years, he has been an active performance art event organizer. He has curated and co-curated over 50 live art events. In 2008-2016 he worked as a producer, designer, technical manager and was responsible for organizing live art events at HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme. More recently, Szrama has been leading workshops and performance courses at art schools and universities.
Monika „Mona” Wińczyk
Artist and activist from Poznań, born in 1977. She works individually, in duos (Monster Hurricane Wihajster, Mellin &Wińczyk) and in other personal constellations. Her work is focused on empathy and emancipation of all beings/phenomena and widely understood nature; it is often accompanied by pain, lack of self-acceptance, generational conflict, instability, longing for worship and violence.
She was co-curator of the “Dragon odBity – 8 bitów” Festival of Performance and Sound Experiment (2011) as well as “DIE FENSTER” – Art Movements: Performance, Sound, Movement Festival (2014); she also initiated the following events: Performance Art Jam Session, MHW Recommends and Monoformance in Poznań. She took part in the following festivals and competitions: Spectra of Malingrad, CBL, Urban Observatory (Toruń), Friv (Poznań), V-Day – Days of Excluded Bodies (Poznań), NSK, Sopot Non-Fiction, Queer Fest, OFF:premieres (Poznań), ShakespeareOFF (Gdańsk), Anima Mundi #2, and in projects supporting refugees: Adopt a Vest, Homeless Gallery, Po_sąsiedzku. She has performed in productions of Ofelia_remix, Nomadka, Re_wolta, Ostatnia wieczerza, Wina Pramatki, Stoję na brzegu rzeki, Stormy protest song, and the opera Napój miłosny. She has also directed productions of mono czy stereo? and Try Walking in my Shoes; she is currently working on another play, TEKKK-Ło spada na Ziemię, whose script won the OFF: premiere competition of TeatrÓsmego Dnia.
She co-organized the “black protest” and Manifa – protests in defense of women’s rights in Poznań, as well as the Poland under Construction exhibitions. She is a member of the BVP project of the Caldodecultivo collective and the Climate Camp. In 2022–2023 she participated in Interaction in Culture, a project organized by the Zamek Cultural Center in Poznań. She collaborated with the composer Rafal Zapała on the opera Operka o mizofinii and with the band KakofoNIKT and Jacek Halas on the concert Wszystkie końce świata.
Ewa Zarzycka
She is a conceptual artist who practices performance art, including a special form known as spoken performance, as well as drawing as a record of her own texts, diagrams, maps, and charts. She creates objects, videos, audio recordings, and installations. She lives and works in Lublin and Kazimierz Dolny. She has been involved in performance art continuously since the 1980s. She studied at the State Higher School of Fine Arts (1973-1978), now the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, where she lectures on Processual Actions and Performance in the postgraduate program Mediation and Art Market.
She is the winner of the Katarzyna Kobro Award at the Museum of Art in Łódź 2024. Her works can be found in the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw, the National Museum in Wrocław – Four Domes Pavilion, Józef Robakowski’s Exchange Gallery, the Museum of Art in Łódź, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Contemporary Museum in Wrocław, Zachęta in Warsaw, MOCAK in Krakow, Andrzej Ciesielski’s My Archive Foundation, and Zachęta Lubelska. She is a scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, as well as the cities of Wrocław and Lublin. Documentation of her work can be found in the Secondary Archive / Artists of Central and Eastern Europe, Saga Archive in Switzerland.
She has performed at many international festivals, including Storytelling (Sopot, Poland, 1992), Performance Platform (Lublin, Poland, 2014 and 2024), Bruno Schulz Festival (Drohobych, Ukraine, 2006, 2014, 2016), Malamut (Ostrava, Czech Republic, 2022), Konteksty (Sokołowsko, Poland 2011–2022) Interactions ( Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland 2015), State of Move Performance Art Festival ( Helsinki, Finland 2018 ), BANG BANG translocal hi:stories of performance art ( Basel, Switzerland 2022), NAKED ( Prague, Czech Republic 2024 ), Opowieści International Festival of Performing Arts (Płock, Poland 2025).
She presents her work in various art venues. She leads and co-leads performance art workshops and implements educational projects in various art venues, such as museums, galleries, schools, and universities.
Marta Ziółek
A pleasure activist, artist, body lover, and life-hungry beast.
I work as an embodiment coach in the field of somatic sexology. I believe in the alchemy of the body and the power of sensitivity. I help ignite the inner fire.
Art, Movement, and Emancipation.
In my artistic practice, I explore diverse forms of expression and embodiment. My current work delves into eroticism as both a spiritual and political force. I believe it’s not just about what we do – but how deeply we can feel it.
I recently initiated Warsaw Mermaids – a project that conjures up urban rebels, seductresses, and emancipated women whose voices and bodies break through what is forbidden.
I lead individual sessions and group processes centered on the body, pleasure, and energetic transformation. I completed Body Therapy Training focused on sexual health and stress-release techniques, including breathwork, somatic trauma therapy, Taoist practices, sexual gymnastics, intimacy healing, and pelvic floor work.
I hold certifications in Dance and Movement Therapy (DMT), TRE (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises), Sacred Womb Movement, and traditional Tantra and Kundalini Yoga.
Currently, I am deepening my knowledge through certification in Sexological Bodywork in the UK – a path of professional development and personal expansion, supporting others on their journey toward erotic sovereignty and embodied healing.
