Performative lyrical-physical duet Magdalena Mellin, Monika Wińczyk.
The main area of the artists’ search is the body and various representations of this body through its fleshiness, memory, gaze, or love. Monika Wińczyk specializes in transcending physical performance and sound. Magdalena Mellin’s space, on the other hand, is images and words, treated comprehensively: meaningfully and rhythmically. The melody of performance is created by repetition, refrain and looping.
Their actions balance the lyricism of the text set apart in a performative figure that presses on the physical limits of the artists’ endurance. Performance is firmly grounded in the body. Two interdependent bodies of female artists intertwined into one sculpture and/or figure.
The whole is a combination of image and word making up a dynamic performance composition that can be seen as a message from a woman in the contemporary world. The set of physical performance figures as a manifesto of the artists, uncompromising in the intimacy and sincerity of their confession, nevertheless takes on a general human character.
Tuesday / Oct 1, 2024 / 6.45 pm / City Campus of the University of Ostrava
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Magdalena Mellin
Visual artist, performer, painter, author and poet. Born in 1984, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk in 2015 and continued her education with a scholarship at Sabancı University in Istanbul. She also participated in the two-year program “Visual Art and Research” at the Dutch Art Institute in the Netherlands. From 2013 to 2017, she was a resident of the Artists’ Colony, where as part of the open studio formula she began her artistic collaboration with Monika Wińczyk, which continues to this day. She presented her performance project Dialogues Not/Conducted, Letters Not/Sent at the Month of Performance Art in Berlin (2015) and at the Festival of New Theater in Rzeszów (2015), among others.
She is the author of What Happens Behind This Wall, Stays Behind This Wall (2012) and Skaryfik(s)a))cja (2018). Her poetic texts have also been published on the Splesz website, in the Warsaw magazine Wakat or in the collection of manifestos entitled Death of Patriarchy. Manifestos – The Revolution is Now!
In 2018, together with Kajetan Hajkowicz and Hubert Wińczyk, she created the Un-Titled performance shown at Teatr Ósmego Dnia in Poznań as part of the “OFF: Premieres/Presentations” competition, which was continued at the Malta Festival in 2020.
Since 2021, together with Andrzej Masko, Mellin has been organizing Dying – cyclical meetings revolving around performance at Klub Farby in Poznań. In 2023, she participated in the “A-Kumulacje 2023” competition, part of the Kalisz Art Biennial, and the 19th Biennial of Poznań.
In her practice she tries to capture the processual and physical aspect of the image in the context of experience, memory and imagination.
Monika „Mona” Wińczyk
Artist and activist from Poznań, born in 1977. She works individually, in duos (Monster Hurricane Wihajster, Mellin & Wińczyk) and in other personal constellations. Her work is focused on empathy and emancipation of all beings/phenomena and widely understood nature; it is often accompanied by pain, lack of self-acceptance, generational conflict, instability, longing for worship and violence.
She was co-curator of the “Dragon odBity – 8 bitów” Festival of Performance and Sound Experiment (2011) as well as “DIE FENSTER” – Art Movements: Performance, Sound, Movement Festival (2014); she also initiated the following events: Performance Art Jam Session, MHW Recommends and Monoformance in Poznań. She took part in the following festivals and competitions: Spectra of Malingrad, CBL, Urban Observatory (Toruń), Friv (Poznań), V-Day – Days of Excluded Bodies (Poznań), NSK, Sopot Non-Fiction, Queer Fest, OFF:premieres (Poznań), ShakespeareOFF (Gdańsk), Anima Mundi #2, and in projects supporting refugees: Adopt a Vest, Homeless Gallery, Po_sąsiedzku. She has performed in productions of Ofelia_remix, Nomadka, Re_wolta, Ostatnia wieczerza, Wina Pramatki, Stoję na brzegu rzeki, Stormy protest song, and the opera Napój miłosny. She has also directed productions of mono czy stereo? and Try Walking in my Shoes; she is currently working on another play, TEKKK-Ło spada na Ziemię, whose script won the OFF:premiere competition of Teatr Ósmego Dnia.She co-organized the “black protest” and Manifa – protests in defense of women’s rights in Poznań, as well as the Poland under Construction exhibitions. She is a member of the BVP project of the Caldodecultivo collective and the Climate Camp. In 2022–2023 she participated in Interaction in Culture, a project organized by the Zamek Cultural Center in Poznań. She collaborated with the composer Rafal Zapała on the opera Operka o mizofinii and with the band KakofoNIKT and Jacek Halas on the concert Wszystkie końce świata.
