KwieKulik: Art as Activation of Everyday Life and Space

• In Event: Free Time and Emancipatory Space in Eastern European Art and Architecture, 1960s-1980s

Abstract

This paper will discuss the activities in the 1970s and ’80s of the Polish artist duo KwieKulik (Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek). Conducting a great variety of creative activities out of their home, KwieKulik imagined a model for a new, emancipated way of being. The paper will sketch out the way they both responded to the specific conditions of state-socialist Poland and anticipated both the utopian and dystopian aspects of socially engaged art, the participatory turn, interest in the politics and economy of domestic labor, and the rise of a gig economy precariat—all issues that remain highly relevant in the contemporary moment, both in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Author

• Ksenya Gurshtein, Independent Scholar