born 1984 in Skierniewice
A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Żyniewicz performs activities generally labelled as bio-art and others widely defined as visual experiments.
The artist set a research laboratory where she works with organic matter using natural processes of decay and atrophy. Her art is based on contrasts between pleasure and disgust and between what is socially acceptable and the sphere of taboo and exclusion. Żyniewicz is interested in the relations between the world of nature and culture and technology. She has collaborated on her projects with scientists, thus creating an interdisciplinary platform for exchange of knowledge and experiences. Currently, she is conducting artistic research on her own evanescence and passing on in the context of contemporary culture.
Karolina Żyniewicz, safe suicide, 2017, installation: photographs, video, documentation
Safe Suicide is a research project that has been pursued for more than a year. The artist carries it out on the basis of standard laboratory experiments – cell cultures and multistage experiments conducted on them, which lead to the death of the cells (apoptosis or necrosis). Żyniewicz’s goal is to allow her “own death” to happen in a conscious and planned manner, while highlighting at the same time the differences between life in vivo and in vitro. All the stages of the laboratory work are documented in photographs; they are also recorded in a research diary. According to the artist’s intention, the formal side of the project remains austere, the visual elements are derived from the world of science, and it is only the change of context that turns them into components of an artistic statement.
