Places for Deliberation. Barbara Kozłowska

Places for Deliberation. Barbara Kozłowska
exhibition curated by Marika Kuźmicz, president of the Arton Foundation

Mala galerija Banke Slovenije
Slovenska cesta 35, Ljubljana, Słowenia
3–30 October 2025

Exhibition curator: Marika Kuźmicz
Curator of the Polish performance art program: Agnieszka Chodysz-Foryś
Curators of the Slovenian performance art program: Ana Grobler i Sebastian Krawczyk
Program associate: Iva Kovač, Hana Čeferin
Coordination: Adam Parol, Marharyta Rubanenko

The exhibition will be accompanied by a performance program:
- 04.10.2025
11:00 – Curatorial tours of the exhibition
12:00 – Performance by Anna Kalwajtys, “Line”
- 16.10.2025
17:00 – Exhibition tour by Iva Kovač
17:30 – Performance by Lučka Centa, “ved’ma”
- 23.10.2025
17:00 – Exhibition tour by Hana Ceferin
17:30 – Performance by Iva Suhadolnik, “The Tape”
- 30.10.2025
17:00 – Exhibition tour by Agnieszka Chodysz-Foryś
17:30 – Performance by Anita Wach, “68 Toasts to a Flawed Heart”

I was born in Poland I exhibited a lot and always where I didn’t want to exhibit where I wanted to exhibit I never exhibited I traveled I performed I traveled where I wanted to go for important artistic reasons I traveled by all available means of transportation as far as possible I performed on beaches in galleries and on video I built I transferred I repeated something over there I was building theoretical models of concepts of some sort I was moving the boundary line to the moon and somewhere I was always repeating the same banal sentences about art and reality or always the same banal truth about art I was writing the obvious about something there I was taking part in exhibitions in Poland Romania Great Britain Italy Yugoslavia I was traveling to Siberia to Great Britain to Malta to Italy Yugoslavia France.

This is the voice of Barbara Kozłowska (1940–2008), speaking about herself. Kozłowska’s auto-bio often accompanied her exhibitions in this form as a kind of text-object. It speaks about the issues most central to her practice: movement, travel, space, and its free passage.

Barbara Kozłowska was a forerunner of performance art in Poland and a participant in the Wrocław avant-garde scene—one of the most vibrant and progressive places on the region’s map at that time. Although she graduated from the Faculty of Ceramics (with a degree in architectural painting), she quickly abandoned traditional media in favor of ephemeral activities.

Kozłowska was born in Tarnobrzeg (Poland), where her family had been relocated at the outbreak of World War II. The war would leave a deep imprint on Kozłowska’s life. In 1940, her father was murdered in the Dachau concentration camp; and one of her brothers, who was involved in opposition activities, was also imprisoned there. The artist was always mindful of the tragic nature of her early years, and tragedy would continue into the post-war years, when she herself became aware of how an impervious political system could crush the life of an individual. She ended up rebelling against the communist regime, a system that restricted her ability to move freely.

Kozłowska identified travel with freedom. This axiom informed her entire conceptual activity and translated into the work Border Line (1967–1990), which unfolded over decades. From 1967 onwards, Kozłowska began marking points on the globe, drawing an imaginary line that she intended to run across the globe, and all the way to the Moon. This was her way of overcoming the formal and political difficulties of her reality. To make the concept more concrete, she visited various places, including the former Yugoslavia, where she made cones out of sand. She would travel further afield to beaches around the world, where she stacked stones or simply documented her presence.

Although Kozłowska explicitly distanced herself from feminism, her works are among the most distinct contributions to Polish art. They offer critical perspectives on gender and art that present us with new possibilities for interpretation today.

The exhibition “Places for Deliberation” marks the first presentation of Barbara Kozłowska’s work in Slovenia. It features a selection of her most important works drawn from her private archive, which is still stored in Wrocław.

Organizer: Culture and Art Centre in Wroclaw – Cultural Institution of the Government of the Lower Silesian Region
Co-organizers: Mala galerija Banke Slovenije (MGBS), City of Women, The Cultural and Artistic Association Mreža (KUD Mreža), Arton Foundation

Partner: Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Ljubljana

Honorary patronage:
Marta Cienkowska – Minister of Culture and National Heritage
Łukasz Paprotny – Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Republic of Poland in Ljubljana

The project is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland from the Culture Promotion Fund and the budget of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship.
The exhibition is part of the International Festival of Contemporary Art – City of Women in Ljubljana.