KATARZYNA (KASIA) SLOBODA
Since 2009 I am involved in curating and researching practices of contemporary art, choreography and improvisation in the context of exhibition making and participatory projects. I have edited several publications on dance, choreography and contemporary art.
I have a Ph.D in dance studies (thesis: Embodied attention in contemporary dance practices in the perspective of critical dance studies / Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw // supervisor: prof. Krystyna Duniec). I was teaching classes at at the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the University of Łódź (curatorial practices, dance/choreography/performance).
Currently I’m an Assistant Professor in curatorial studies at the Art Academy in Szczecin. Between 2009 and 2022 I had been a part of curatorial team at the Modern Art Deparment in Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz.
I am a member of AICA - International Association of Art Critics and Common Space initiative. Between 2021 and 2025 I was a Board Member of Forum Association of Dance Art Societies and between 2019 and 2022 I was a member of CIMAM - International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art. Together with Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Ola Knychalska, Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga and Kasia Właszczyk developed How to touch movement? Social choreographies, performance and queer feminisms as world-making kem school programme.
I am a recipient of Grażyna Kulczyk fellowship in the field of contemporary choreography and Młoda Polska scholarship (2018). In 2018 I was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Dance Studies / Roehampton University, London.
A Place for Folding and Unfolding Time by Alicja Bielawska is an exhibition that combines various levels of experience: the material and the ephemeral, the present and the memory, the pause and the fluidity. The artist treats time as if it were plastic matter − something that can be compacted or loosened, folded or unwound, or draped like fabric. The undulating structures of her artworks suggest that time is not a straight line: it can bend, repeat itself and overlap, creating a network of connections between moments, expanding in multiple parallel directions.
The sculptures and drawings by Bielawska engage in a close dialogue with the space where they are displayed. In this case, said space consists of former residential interiors − places that served to store traces of everyday life, accumulated memories, gestures and glances. The artist fills these interiors with her own objects that do not just occupy a specific position in the space but also invite visitors to inhabit them: to sit down, pass through or stop for a while. Throughout the time of the exhibition, an intimate topography is being created and accumulated, representing the meetings between artworks, the venue, and you − our visitors.
The matter employed by Bielawska consists of fabrics that were dyed manually by the artist using plant-based dyes made of spruce pines, madder roots and onion peels. Thanks to the draping, they gain exceptional density, enriching the palette of hues, subtly nuanced shades of colours that change according to the angle at which you look at them, or the intensity of light in the room. The shapes of draped fabric evoke the presence of human body, while endowed with an above-human corporeality.
Movement is also part of this exhibition on many levels. Draped fabrics slide over edges, drawings are filled with shapes dripping with colour, they vibrate with tiny shifts in their lines, and the layout of objects within the space allows for a slow-paced and smooth passage between them. Even if sculptures stay still, their forms suggest gestures − captured half-way, suspended between appearing and fading away. The same movement can be found echoing in your choreographies, when you walk between rooms, stopping, passing by, or looking at artworks from different perspectives. Each one of your glances becomes the next stage in a sequence proposed by sculptures and drawings.
Bielawska introduces the element of playing with visual perception: colours shift depending on the light, fabrics sway gently under gusts of air, textures reveal themselves when you come closer, and the proportions of shapes in the drawings enter into a dialogue with the shapes of ceramic sculptures on the walls or the draped fabrics. We hope that, as viewers, you can feel more aware of the interaction between your presence and the artworks in this space. It is a way for the exhibition to break away from a closed layout and instead become a living, ever-shifting composition whose ultimate shape can only be achieved in cooperation with you − our audience.
A Place for Folding and Unfolding Time can be treated as a space for creating common rhythm − a time-space woven of multiple layers, where the material meets the memory, and commotion meets moments of stillness. It is an invitation to a more careful and sensual perception, where every step and every moment of viewing adds your own fragment to the story created from presence.
Katarzyna Słoboda
Exhibition: Alicja Bielawska. A Place for Folding and Unfolding Time
Curator: Katarzyna Słoboda
Opening: Fri, 14 Nov 2025, 7 p.m.
Duration: 15 Nov 2025 – 26 Feb 2026
Polish Institut Düsseldorf, Citadellstr. 7, 40213 Düsseldorf
www.instytutpolski.pl/duesseldorf