KAROLINA KUBIK — POZNAŃ / WORLDWIDE — PUBLIC SPACE SINCE 2007
VISUALPERFORMANCEPOET.
Fifteen years of performing in public space — from Brooklyn to Tartu. Now also one-to-one: contemporary visual culture, made useful in your own life. Peace happens when the story is being told.
SELECTED WORKS · 2012–2026
p. 012The archive is a live thing.
Click a frame to read the work.
VIDEO ARCHIVE
p. 088Watch the work, not just the wall text.
Click a still to play the documentation.
▶SAD PEOPLE SEX
2016 — The Hidden Valley, Last Frontier NYC, Brooklyn
▶MAGDALENE
2012–17 — portrait with a sick white woman — video installation, London
▶LINIA KLUCZOWA I
2023 — Muzeum w Podziemiu, Wrocław — video Nikodem Baiser
▶THE KISS OF DEATH NO.2
2014 — Poznań
▶GOODS OF WEIGHT
2012 — video in loop — shown by Dimanche Rouge TV, 2014
▶THE WOODPECKER'S PANACEA
2024 — Carter Burden Gallery, New YorkPOEM-IN-ACTION · 2008–2014 · TRANSLATED FROM THE POLISH ORIGINAL
p. 044translation* of geopolitics onto the body
I need elbows to knead British buns2008
I elbow my way, socially2008
I slide a tube into the mute mouth of Crimea and gather water2010
I spit the Black Sea into costly drinking water, drinking water into the sea2010
into a tender palate I place a house of chalk, a mother of chalk2012, 2014
with a drawing of a brawl I return to my mates2012
I bind my fingers with beeswax in a hollow of industrial suburbs2012
to fight in London, to stand my ground on a Lviv pedestal2012
with an Orthodox cross I count the wrong hour on my fingers2014
besides showing my broken tailbone, I wait2014
a plane falls on Ukraine2014
in the crook of my arm I hold Polish poles2012, 2013
ready for a loose grip and a strike2012, 2013, 2014
a tin hoop defines me at the waist, a gentian inscribed in my hip2008, 2013
by distance I understand meeting2008, 2012, 2013, 2014
a fingerprint is a hill I raise in Estonia, to see Livonia2013
I appropriate, and am subordinated to, the mother place2013, 2014
with isoline gauze I end my journey into the desert2014
with a wind-up-free throw I mean to throw long, across half the city2012
my arm bounces off floors and walls2012
I am not quite right when I listen to the body drumming in the glass2012
my hands drop beside my knees at the American president's cry of comfort2014
my thigh is a vessel for the helpless hand guarding the pocket2013
at the thought of Slovakia I see animals crushed for weeks2014
my back against the seat, I let the environment be read as text2014
* in geometry: a transformation of space that shifts all its points by the same vector; a parallel displacement
Note before the action Rajdowiec (series Are You Satisfied With The Experiment? Did Europe Make It?) · Kubik + Kalwajtys · 8.11.2014, Kolonia Artystów, OPA IV, Gdańsk
THE PRODUCT — 1:1 SESSIONS
p. 104Contemporary visual culture, made useful.
A few people each season, one-to-one. We read contemporary visual culture horizontally — in the spirit of Piotr Piotrowski's Poznań school, but from a practitioner's side of the table — not as a canon handed down from above, but as a tool you can actually use. Roles stay fluid in the room: each person is a student and also a teacher.
Pick a slot
All times 18:00 CET. Request a slot — Karolina confirms personally within 48 hours.
BIO
p. 196Daughter of Bogumiła. Sister of Katarzyna.
Karolina Kubik (b. 1984, Zelów) is a visual performance poet and anti-fascist. Fulbright scholar, MFA Pratt Institute New York (2018), MFA University of Arts in Poznań (2010). Since 2014 she co-runs the III Intermedia Studio and teaches her own Public Space Activities course at the University of Arts in Poznań.
Studio door — intermedia.uap.edu.pl ↗
Photo © Maciej Zakrzewski — Malta Festival Poznań 2015
What time is it on the clock of the world? — Grace Lee Boggs
A bird doesn't sing because he has an answer, he sings because he has a song. — Joan Walsh Anglund
ATLAS — 19 CITIES, 2007–2026
nineteen cities, one key
CV — CURRICULUM VITAE
p. 210The long view.
Education
2026 — PhD defense: “HAHAHAHAHA — Unheld Formation (Key Line)”, University of Arts in Poznań
2018 — MFA Performance and Performance Studies, Pratt Institute, New York (Fulbright scholarship; Teaching Assistant)
2010 — MFA, University of Arts in Poznań
Teaching & positions
co-founder, Intermedia Institute (Instytut Intermediów), UAP Poznań
since 2014 — co-runs the III Intermedia Studio ↗, UAP Poznań
since 2014 — author course Public Space Activities, UAP Poznań
Studio Manager for Mirosław Bałka's international projects — incl. How It Is, Tate Modern, London · Signals, IHME, Helsinki
Curatorial projects
2026 — Forum Biosfery: Mikro-Makro Uczta ↗ — co-curator with Sebastian Cichocki & Kris Łukomski, UAP Poznań
2025 — ODRA .MISSISIPI season — co-curator, Pawilon, Poznań · opening performance “Ciecze wyczerpane” with Dawid Dzwonkowski
2025 — Planetary Realism — co-curator
2024 — The Animal is Present — co-curator, UAP Poznań
2022–25 — MANIFEST kairos — program council, Poznań
Selected exhibitions & festivals 2007–2026
2026 — La Villa | The Key to Art from Poznań ↗, Villa Farsetti, Venice
2026 — Forum Biosfery: Mikro-Makro Uczta ↗ — co-curator, UAP Poznań
2022–25 — II Biennale Zielona Góra ODNOWA/RENEWAL ↗ (The Woodpecker's Panacea) · Key Line I, Wrocław Off Gallery Weekend · The Key of Birds with Alexis Kandra + The Woodpecker's Panacea ↗, Carter Burden Gallery, New York
2021 — Z tej nocy będzie serce ↗ (with Althamer, Bałka, Natalia LL, Schneemann), Muzeum Współczesne Wrocław
2019 — Tadeusze (with Anna Jochymek), Trienále Prostor Zlín
2018 — Anti-Static, Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu
2016 — Pratt Institute Final Presentations, Brooklyn · Muchmore's with Tamio Shiraishi · ABC No Rio, Manhattan · Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn · The Hidden Valley, Last Frontier NYC · Misplaced Women?, Aberdeen (workshop with Tanja Ostojić) · International Women's Day, Perth
2015 — Hidden Door Festival ↗, Edinburgh · Malta Festival Poznań ↗ · Boom Bang II, Northampton + Žagarė + Tbilisi · MAD THEORY 2, Madison · Art Has No Alternative, tranzit.sk, Bratislava · The Frontline East, LCCA, Riga
2014 — Nomadic Arts Festival, Warsaw · Crossarts, Galeria Primus, Lviv · CREATurE Live Art, Kaunas · XVI Interakcje, Piotrków Trybunalski · Aesthetics and Bias, Israel
2013 — Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival · WRO Media Art Biennale, Wrocław · Contexts, Sokołowsko ↗
2012 — IPA Summer, Istanbul · Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen's · Residency, ]performance s p a c e[, London · Contexts, Sokołowsko
2007 — Perwa#3, Gdańsk Shipyards · PortPerformance with BBB Johannes Deimling, Kunstfabrik, Berlin
PRESS — SELECTED REVIEWS
p. 224What they wrote.
“…the perfect pointer of things to come.”
Neil Cooper, The List — Writers' picks: Scotland's Best Summer Festivals, 2015
On MAGDALENE / Are You Satisfied With The Experiment? at Hidden Door Festival, Edinburgh — Cooper introduces “Polish performance artist Karolina Kubik”, framing the work as a meeting of avant-garde intervention and urban spectacle.
list.co.uk/news/43270/writers-picks-scotlands-best-summer-fe ↗Culture.pl — The Year of Kantor: A Summary, 2015
Kantor-inspired actions in Edinburgh drew great interest; Kubik's performance “particularly attracted the attention of the audience and the media” — seen by around 1,200 people across the city.
culture.pl/pl/artykul/podsumowanie-roku-kantora ↗Culture.pl — KURKA WODNA: Kantor, Demarco and the Edinburgh Festival, 2015
Materials from Hidden Door met with great interest — Herald Scotland particularly recommended Kubik's performance.
culture.pl/pl/wydarzenie/kurka-wodna-kantor-demarco-i-festiw ↗“…pinpointed the source of danger perfectly.”
Marek Staszyc, OBIEG — The Loneliness of the Performer (Konteksty, Sokołowsko)
A critical essay on the young Polish performance scene; Kubik's action analysed through barracks, taming, control and discipline.
archiwum-obieg.u-jazdowski.pl/prezentacje/26284 ↗SZUM — From This Night a Heart Will Be Born, Muzeum Współczesne Wrocław, 2021
Situates The Woodpecker's Panacea — a site-specific action / performance / text — within engaged, relational art and subversive strategies.
magazynszum.pl/z-tej-nocy-bedzie-serce-w-muzeum-wspolczesnym ↗FORMAT magazine — review of the Interakcje festival (archival)
An archival review already describing Kubik as a recognizable figure on the Polish performance scene, with a detailed account of her action.
www.dbc.wroc.pl/Content/27317/format_2012_64.pdf ↗“…a durational installaction.”
Neil Cooper, Coffee-Table Notes — Hidden Door Rewind: Karolina Kubik, 2023
Cooper returns to the 2015 performance years later, reconstructing the five-hour chalk action in detail.
coffeetablenotes.blogspot.com/2023/04/hidden-door-personal-f ↗“Beautiful, full of intention, presence, and depth.” — audience comment
Emmemm Publishing — Woodpecker's Panacea / Panaceum Dzięcioła, Carter Burden Gallery, New York, 2024
The New York project framed as “healing the urban body” — urban acupuncture and public-space intervention.
www.emmemmpublishing.com/post/karolina-kubik-woodpecker-s-pa ↗Carter Burden Gallery — The Key of Birds, New York, 2024
The gallery describes Kubik's practice as built on poetry, repetition, whispering, laughter and pro-peace activism — experiential and participatory.
carterburdengallery.squarespace.com/june-27-july-24-2024 ↗Biennale Zielona Góra ODNOWA/RENEWAL — artist profile, 2022
Profile of the artist and The Woodpecker's Panacea at the II Biennale Zielona Góra.
biennalezielonagora.pl/karolina-kubik-en/ ↗Malta Festival Poznań — artist archive
Archival artist profile documenting Kubik's performances at Malta Festival.
archiwum.malta-festival.pl/artist/karolina-kubik/ ↗Contemporary Lynx — The Legacy of Tadeusz Kantor, Edinburgh Festival, 2015
Coverage of the Kantor-inspired Edinburgh programme in which Kubik performed.
contemporarylynx.co.uk/event/edinburgh-festival-the-legacy-o ↗Contexts Festival of Ephemeral Art, Sokołowsko — artist profile
Festival profile in the Contexts archive of ephemeral art.
contexts.com.pl/en/artist/karolina-kubik-2-2/ ↗