ZOSIA zoltkowski
Living globally between my families farm in Australia, urban cities and a beach town on the Oaxacan coast of Mexico.I’m an emerging transdisciplinary artist exploring the complexities and liminality of identity, territory and ancestry, engaging installation, sculpture, video, performance and community engagement modalities. As a queer Polish, first-generation Australian artist, I use my body, ritual processes and thematic elements to create relational site-specific works. Relying significantly upon my intuition, somatics and the process of play, I explore ways to reconnect, re-tune and re-engage with myself and the natural environment around us. My art practice interrogates the boundaries between the tangible and intangible, material and immaterial, and the permanent and impermanent. Through this, the audience is invited to contemplate the urban vs natural binary antithesis whilst sometimes thrusting the viewer into disorienting encounters with their physical and perceptual surroundings. My artistic practice thrives on engaging with communities and fostering cross-cultural connections with people wherever I become a temporary resident.
I have travelled and lived globally, amongst communities and networks of people, from remote places to urban cities in Asia, the Middle East, Russia and Latin America. These engagements of transversality continue to instigate my fascination with local histories, relational dynamics, animism, radical ecologies, spirituality, and reimagined futures. My work has been featured in group exhibitions globally in Korea, Australia, Italy, Iceland, Spain and Mexico. My first solo exhibition was in Florence, Italy, where I delved into a months-long investigation of the Carrara, Italy, marble mines. Additionally, I have performed durationally and exhibited multiple times in Italy, collaborating with local communities and primary schools in border town territories.
CV
Upcoming
2024 VIR Viafarini-in-residence, Milan, Italy
Exhibitions (selected)
2023 “Wasted” (Durational Performance & Installation), Group Exhibition, IoDeposito, Udine, Italy
2023 Performance & Installation, Koik Contemporary Gallery, Mexico City
2023 Performance, The Palace Collective Residency, Pałac Gorzanów, Poland
2023 “they love me, they love me not”, Durational Performance & Installation, Gallerí Úthverfa/Outvert Art Space, Ísafjörður, Iceland
2023 Open Studios, AADK, Blanca, Murcia, Spain
2023 “Rust with me” (Durational Performance & Installation), Casa Maccari, Italy
2023 “Time Oxidation” (Durational Performance & Installation), MAKE Spazio Espositivo, Italy
2023 “Iron & Rust” (Performance), Haab Project, Mexico City, Mexico
2023 “Iron & Rust”(Performance), Mexico City Art Week - Honest Allies, Mexico
2022 “Untitled Iron” (Durational Performance & Exhibition), B#Side War Festival, Friuli, Italy
2022 “Memesi”(Durational Performance & Solo-Exhibition), Galeria Chiasso Perduto, Florence, Italy
2022 “Social” (Video Performance), Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Korea
2022 “Aria di Capri” (Video Performance), Capri, Italy
2022 Current Corporate Gallery (Video Performance), Treviso, Italy
2020 “Queensland Young Artist Award” Exhibition, Petrie Terrace Gallery, Australia
Residencies
2023 The Palace Collective Residency, Pałac Gorzanów, Poland
2023 Kol & Salt Residency, ArtsIceland, Ísafjörður, Iceland
2023 AADK Spain Residency, Murcia, Spain
2022 Galeria Chiasso Perduto Artist in Residency Program & Solo-Exhibition, Florence, Italy
2022 B#Side Artist in Residency Program, IoDeposito, Friuli, Italy
Awards/Grants
2020 Queensland Young Artist Award - Commended
2020 Winner of Female Exhibition, Art Jobs Open Call
Workshops
2023 “Connecting to Territory” Community Workshop, Ísafjörður, Iceland
2023 “Embodiement Lab” AADK, Murcia, Spain
2022 “Presence” Workshop at Scuola Elementare "Dante Alighieri", Friuli, Italy
Education
2018 Butoh Dance Course led by Ezio Tangini, Amsterdam
2017 Art School drop out, Victorian College of Art, Melbourne, Australia