She studied at Faculty of Arts of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, at Faculty of Graphic Arts of Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, and in the class of Hito Steyerl at University of the Arts in Berlin. In 2013, she was nominated for Views Deutsche Bank Award. She participated in Biennale of Sydney, Biennale in Venice, and Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. She exhibited her works at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, New Museum in New York, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. She is a laureate of Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Polish Film Institute and Wajda School Film Award Film Award and prestigious German National Gallery Award granted every two years to artists living in Berlin.
“Ask a Mermaid”, 2017
video, 10’25’’
Agnieszka Polska creates films, animations, and photographs. In her works she often uses found and archival footage. She is interested in issues of individual responsibility in context of a rapidly changing reality. In “Ask a Mermaid” video, the artist reaches for a figure of a mythical creature – a hybrid, whose identity is a patchwork of opposites. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure if I’m a fish or a human?” – in the narrative of a Mermaid from video of Polska, worlds that cannot be reconciled collide with each other, and paradoxically they become unity. The narrative flows in a bipolar way. Mermaid – a character with two faces and two pairs of lips utters words that form a double voice. The statement of the Mermaid, however, is not coherent, usually it is contradictory. In her (their?) statements, different discourses, values, as well as female and make elements collide. For the artist , the Mermaid, seeking her own identity and subjectivity, is a symbol of Polish character–the embodiment of internal conflict. Its history dates back to the Christian colonisation of Poland.
