Zuzanna Janin
Ring
Femmage à Ana Mendieta
Zuzanna Janin presented Fight as part of her solo exhibition ILoveYouToo in 2001 at the Zachęta – National Gallery of Art. The actual filming was preceded by several months of boxing training, after which the artist faced off
against heavyweight boxer Przemysław Saleta. Unlike in a sports ring, here the corners are not 3 marked with different colours, and the opponents wear identical white outfits. There seems to be no winner or loser in this duel and the struggle is not a one-off clash. Boxing as a metaphor for life, the fight for the position of female artists in the male-dominated art environment – these are just some of the obvious interpretative tropes of this work.
Zuzanna Janin
(b. 1961) a visual artist, sculptor, author of installations, performances, objects, photographs and video installations. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1987, earned her PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Arts in Poznań in 2016, and her postdoctoral degree in Art from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk in 2020. She participated in the Biennale of Sydney (1992), the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art (1999) and a group exhibition at the Romanian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). She was recognised as Best Artist of ArtVilnius’16 and a laureate of the 50 Bold Women 2018 award. In 2018, she founded the international Maria Anto and Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven Art Award.