Anna BAUMGART

Anna Baumgart was born in Wrocław in 1966. She graduated from the Faculty of Sculpture and Intermedia of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (where she studied under Franciszek Duszeńko) in 1994, but has not limited her practice to this medium. Indeed, she is also proficient in video, installation, performance and artistic tattooing. All these media serve her mostly feminist perspective, through which she investigates subjective societal issues, namely that of the ‘other’ in culture.

The city of Gdańsk witnessed and supported Baumgart’s early rise to cultural relevance, beginning in 1994 with her first solo exhibition as a new graduate. The following year, the city recognised her early work with the Award of the City of Gdańsk for the Most Interesting Debut. This mutually supportive relationship continued in the form of fruitful opportunities including collaborations with important local cultural institutions such as the Wyspa Gallery, the Spiż 7 Gallery, the Baltic Cultural Centre and the Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA). Another formative experience for Baumgart was her presence at Status Quo at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko in 1996, where she showed pieces exhibiting post-minimal and post-conceptual tendencies.

Initially fully dedicated to the medium she studied, Baumgart produced works that juxtaposed biology and technology, giving the former the edge. This was already evident in the mid-1990s in her work Let Unrestrained Anger Be Eliminated (1996), a structure which combined sculptural materiality with electric and optical devices and organic substances (honey). These unlikely associations sought to reconcile, via contrast, male and female archetypes, and explore the resonance between maleness and femaleness.

Video art quickly became more prominent, helping the artist explore feminine emotionality and its impact on interpersonal relationships or educational patterns. These filmic enquiries resonated with the cultural landscape of the time, hence her work being featured in numerous seminal shows, such as WROMedia Art Biennale in 1997 and 1999; At The Time of Writing, Zamek Ujazdowski CCA in Warsaw, 1998; Public Relations, Łaźnia CCA in Gdańsk, 1999; and a solo exhibition at Zamek Ujazdowski CCA in Warsaw, also in 1999. In 2012, her film Fresh Cherries was screened at major international video art festivals and won an award at the Loop Festival in Barcelona.

A move to Warsaw in 2000 marked the third act of Baumgart’s career. With a relocation came a change of perspective compared with her previous work, which coincided with the foundation of Café Baumgart at the Zamek Ujazdowski CCA, which promoted an anarchistic-feminist agenda via meetings, performances and other events. Since then, this social aspect of artistic practice has never left her work. Indeed, the Café was the first of many forward-thinking cultural spaces and initiatives: in 1994-1995 she co-created the programme of Gdańsk’s Delicatessen Avant-Garde Gallery and of the Forum of Contemporary Art at the Gazownia Gallery, organising the Salon of Video Art project; in 1998 Baumgart founded the Bureau for Creative Initiatives. All the while, Café Baumgart’s continued to rise, and it is now a true cultural institution.