25/03/2026
gathering
{Live}
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What does an artistic practice look like when it is built around collaboration, biography and a constant crossing of media boundaries? As part of the Na żywo series, we invite you to a meeting with Elka Krajewska — an interdisciplinary artist whose work moves across different fields of art, treating them as tools for shared experimentation and exchange.
- Krajewska’s practice encompasses painting, sculpture, video, digital film installations, photography and performance. She frequently works in dialogue with other artists — composers, poets and visual artists — approaching collaboration as a central element of the creative process.
- In 1989 she emigrated to New York, where the downtown performance and music scene — particularly the milieu surrounding Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater — shaped her fluid approach to artistic tools, forms and aesthetics. Since then she has continued to work across media and cultural contexts, regularly returning to Poland. Since 2023 she has been based in Warsaw.
- An important aspect of her work is a long-term collaboration with her mother, artist KrajM. Since 2007 Krajewska has been caring for and developing her artistic practice, producing catalogues and exhibitions of KrajM’s work. Their collaboration has been presented, among other places, at lokal_30 gallery and at the Museum of Wola.
- During the meeting the artist will speak about her artistic path and selected projects, including the experimental film Plany Mela (2007) — the first abstract experimental film made in 70 mm for projection on an Omnimax screen (360° IMAX Dome). The work includes three frames from Dante Quartet and pays tribute to Stan Brakhage, who hand-painted IMAX film stock but never succeeded in screening it.
- Elka Krajewska is also the founder and president of the Salvage Art Institute in New York — an organisation dedicated to artworks that insurance companies have declared a “total loss” and which have therefore been removed from the official circulation of the art market.
- She received her BA in Literature and Photography from the City College of New York and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, where she studied photography with Nan Goldin and Richard Benson, and sculpture with Ron Jones. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at lokal_30 gallery, Galeria Arsenał in Białystok, Soloway Gallery in New York, and Carico Massimo in Livorno, among others. Krajewska received the Artistic Scholarship of the City of Warsaw for 2026.
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{Live}
- Every week, we meet live with artists to talk about art: creative processes, works, and current experiences.
- We host both artists who have previously taken part in Ujazdowski Castle’s programme and those making their debut. In this series, we would like to focus on individual approaches and artistic practices.
- Why take part?
- The events will be recorded for archival purposes, and the recordings will be made available online through the Mediateka.
- In times of tensions and crises, thinking and talking together about contemporary art – which responds to today’s challenges in unconventional ways – helps strengthen social resilience. Art is not only the object – just as important are the process, the thinking, the emotions, and the relationships that accompany it. The meetings offer a closer look at how art is created and, most importantly, who creates it.
- Every week, we meet live with artists to talk about art: creative processes, works, and current experiences.
- The meetings are open to everyone, from people working professionally in culture and art, to those who are curious about artists and their work, or simply want to talk about art.
- We do our best to make the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art accessible to everyone – we would like to adapt the event to you and your needs. To help us do that, please contact our accessibility coordinator: dostepnosc@u-jazdowski.pl, no later than the Monday before the event.
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