Ewa Kuryluk

(b. 1946) – a writer and poet, painter, photographer and avant-garde artist.

She made her debut in 1974 with an essay on Viennese art of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ‘Wiedeńska apokalipsa’ (Viennese Apocalypse). Her hallmark in her essays, apart from her in-depth knowledge of her subjects, is her style, which gives them great literary value. Her erudition, in turn, distinguishes her prose.

‘I write what I cannot draw, I draw what I cannot write’ – this was the motto of Ewa Kuryluk’s installation ‘Skóra/Niebo – Czerwień/Błękit: Rysopisy’ (Skin/Sky – Red/Blue: Crackscripts), exhibited in 1990 at Art in General in New York. This is one key to her work: she is a multifaceted artist, joining various techniques, and also, as an experienced traveller and an intellectual, she can join past and present, literary figures and historical figures, and settings that are geographically and chronologically remote.

The major motifs in her work are: travel, maps, crossing borders, the body, shadows, mirror images, self-portraits, autobiography, moving from one language to another. As she writes in ‘Wieku 21’ (Century 21): ‘English still towers over Polish. It reminds me of a piece of strong, yet fragile canvas: expansive enough to fit a detailed map of the world, but it also easily fits into your pocket. A sensible language’. Ewa Kuryluk plays with conventions – in Century 21 she meets literary figures and artists from distant spaces and times, composing a photoromanzo as a coda – a collage of photographs in which she and her loved ones ‘play’ the book’s protagonists. There are many such moments when she winks at her reader – the book ‘Encyklopedierotyk’ (Encyclopedierotic) is a collection of letters to and from Roland Barthes, a deck of cards showing love in its various forms.

In her work, the private takes precedence, there are frequent reflections on her approach to art: ‘I chat with Dante, you gossip with Laura. We, brightly-coloured birds, sing to one another. We grasshoppers explore the same blades of grass, sniff the same metaflowers. The word is culture. Culture is a vision. Milton recites Ovid, and when he trails off, I pick up the line. A glove fished from the snows of Siberia is our text, a text with no end. Exiled from earth, I continue writing from the moon’ (Century 21).

In 2004, Ewa Kuryluk published Goldi, a conversation with and tribute to her father, Karol Kuryluk. In 2009, she released Frascati – a conversation with and portrait of her mother, Maria Kuryluk. Ten years later, her last family volume was published: Feluni, about her brother, Piotr. In this autobiographical series, the author joins a private perspective from concrete objects (russet apples, a cravat, slippers) with a broad look at the epoch, with great knowledge and sensitivity, often posing questions instead of pronouncing verdicts.

Kuryluk’s artwork is held in public and private collections in Europe and the USA; in the national museums in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznań and Wrocław and the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź.

Goldi was shortlisted for the Nike Literary Award (2005).