BERLIN.- Persons Projects is presenting Zofia Kulik’s solo exhibition, Written in Her Own Hand, which traces the various stages of her artistic emancipation as she discovers her own voice as an independent female artist. The exhibition also serves as the initial platform for her first monographic book, published by Thames & Hudson, which comprehensively explores Kulik’s extraordinary body of work.

The exhibition begins with her most memorable graduate work (1968–1971) and follows her transition into the collaborative duo KwieKulik (1971–1987), formed with her partner Przemysław Kwiek- Ending with a large black-and-white self-portrait depicting her as a queen. Together, these selected works provide a deeper understanding of how Kulik’s individual career developed into what it is today.

A central part of Kulik’s graduation diploma at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts was a three- screen slide projection titled Instead of Sculpture, composed of around 500 photographs (now part of the Tate Modern Collection). For Kulik, sculpture is a process that unfolds over time, without a defined beginning or end, and without a fixed narrative. She explored the dynamic between sculpture and the viewer, analyzing how perception becomes part of the sculptural experience.

Both Kulik and Kwiek studied under the influential architect, artist, and theorist Oskar Hansen, who developed the concept of Open Form—a theory advocating for spatial forms that are unfinished or incomplete, thus inviting creative participation from the viewer.

Right after graduation, the duo became increasingly engaged with cybernetics and game theory. One such work, Game on an Actress’s Face, presents a series of close up photographs of actress Ewa Lemańska and references game theory principles— where actions and decisions are analyzed in terms of their impact on multiple players in complex, interdependent systems.

They transformed their home into a hybrid space—part studio, part gallery—called the Studio of Activities, Documentation, and Propagation (PDDiUW). Rejecting the traditional object- based art canon, KwieKulik turned to ephemeral “Activities” instead, that exposed the creative process and explored a wide range of artistic correlations (Activities for the Head, 1978 and Activities for Clay Head, 1981).

Within the duo, Kulik often played the role of the silent Significant Other. In 1978, she made a quiet yet powerful solo gesture titled Zofia Kulik’s Plea for Pardon. She later recalled:

“For the first time, I tried to do something without Kwiek. The duo was suffocating me — because in all of these repetitions, we were always saying and doing the same things. What was the public supposed to forgive me for? I didn’t know exactly. Probably, emphasizing that I was not truly present, even if I appeared to be. I was nothing but part of a dimorphic hybrid in which my role was unclear. I was tired of that muteness within myself. I approached the public several times, only to fall onto my knees. I felt totally humiliated—but I asked for that. I needed such a situation, and I got it.”

Kulik’s break from Kwiek in 1987 preceded the separation of another renowned Eastern European duo—Marina Abramović and Ulay—by just one year. Like Abramović, Kulik began to forge a new path as an autonomous female artist. This marked the beginning of Kulik’s artistic transformation and her pioneering approach to archive building. Her works employed a highly refined darkroom technique using multiple exposures on photographic paper, revealing a profound sensitivity to composition, control and precision.

Her first manifest work, Come with Me Through the Valley of Tears – after Artur Grottger, 1988, featured Zbigniew Libera as her muse. Collaborating with him further, she developed Archive of Gestures, which became a recurring source of visual motifs and ornamentation in her practice. From the beginning, documentation has been essential to Kulik’s work. She meticulously records her creative process as well as what is happening around her in notebooks and maintains an extensive photographic archive, integrating these materials into her final works. As art historian Angela Dimitrakaki wrote:

“Kulik’s time-frame is marked by major historical events (in Poland), as well as by her development as an artist—more precisely, as a female artist—an unstable yet provocative political category in feminist imaginaries since the turbulent 1960s.” Her iconic large-scale self- portraits—where she appears as a queen—stand as powerful affirmations of her awakening, both as a woman and as an artist asserting her individual voice.

Zofia Kulik’s work was exposed to a wider audience during documenta 12 (2007) in Kassel and at the 47th Biennale di Venezia (1997). She had numerous solo presentations, including Glasgow Sculpture Studios (2016), Badischer Kunstverein (2016) and Les Rencontres d’Arles (2023). Her work is part of renowned international institutions such as Tate Modern, MoMA NY, Centre Pompidou, among others, as well as many other important private collections.