Aneta Szylak

Co-founder and currently director of Wyspa Institute of Art - the intellectual environment for contemporary visual culture - in the former Gdansk Shipyard premises in Poland and Vice-President of the Wyspa Progress Foundation.
In 1998, Ms Szylak founded with Grzegorz Klaman the Laznia (Bathhouse) Centre for Contemporary Art and was its Director until spring 2001. Her exhibitions are characterised by a strong response towards the cultural, political, social, architectural and institutional specificity and include: „Estrangement“ (with Hiwa K) at The Showroom, London (2010), „Over and Over Again“ at The Centennial Hall, Wroclaw (2009), „Chosen“ in Digital Art Lab in Holon, Israel (with Galit Eilat), „Translate: The Impossible Collection“ at Wyspa (in 2008), Ewa Partum: The Legality of Space at Wyspa (2006) and a group show You won’t feel a thing: On Panic, Obsession, Rituality and Anaesthesia in Kunsthaus Dresden and Artur Zmijewski: Selected Works at Wyspa (all in 2006). Dockwatchers [2005, Wyspa], Palimpsest Museum [2004, I Lodz Biennale], Health & Safety [2004, Wyspa], Architectures of Gender [2003, SculptureCenter, New York]. Her writings have been published in Aprior Magazine, n.paradoxa, Art Journal, ArtKrush. Art Margins. In 2005, she was given the Jerzy Stajuda Award “for independent and uncompromising curatorial practice”. She has lectured at many art institutions and universities, including New School University, Queens College and New York University, both in NYC, Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton as well as Copenhagen University and worked as a guest professor at the Akademie der Bildende Kunste in Mainz, Germany.

Currently she is writing her PhD thesis at Copenhagen Doctoral School Copenhagen University and Goldsmiths College in London.

Interests: Art activism, socially and politically engaged art, public space, memory and history matters, art, literary and linguistic theories, contextual practices, conceptualization of art institutions.