Prize awarded by the jury composed of: Jill Godmilow, Zorka Wollny and Krzysztof Garbaczewski.
The film A Digressive Identity was created as a one-off video performance inspired by Olga Boznańska. The artist adopted Boznańska’s costume as her point of departure: the long, old-fashioned dress and white apron the painter wore at her studio. She loaned a dress from the theatre and arranged her house to resemble Boznańska’s Parisian workshop. The impractical, lavish dress was old-fashioned even in the photographs of the painter in her studio – it was to serve as a pretext to analyse the aging process of the painting medium. However, the presence of viewers during the performance and growing tension provoked Katarzyna Swinarska to a reflection on corporeality and the aggressive, assessing look. The monologue was entirely improvised. The material was shot by Andrzej Wojciechowski in late 2014; a fragment was later used by Anna Baumgart in her film The Dark Matter of Art. The performer edited the film herself several months later thanks to Agata Jakubowska, who became interested in her concept of impersonating female artists described in her 2014 doctoral thesis.
Katarzyna Swinarska works with painting, video works – often following the conventions of video performances, and multimedia projects where she combines projection and sound. What is most striking in her works is the analytical approach to image. In 2015 she curated the multimedia exhibition Love Me, or Leave Me on the origins of the Institute of Visual Arts in Sopot; she presented two individual exhibitions in Poland and one in Belgium. She is currently preparing an individual exhibition Silent Heads in Grodno and working with Elvin Flamingo on a joint project Us – Common Organism. Her paintings form part of private collections in Poland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the US and have been purchased by the State Art Gallery in Sopot and the Wyspa Art Institute in Gdańsk. She lives and works in Sopot. She is the finalist of the 2nd Triennale of Pomeranian Art in Sopot in the Sculpture and Video Installations category (2015), holder of the art scholarship of the city of Sopot (2016 and 2014), nominee to the 3rd Contemporary Art Triennale in Rzeszów awards (2013), holder of the Mobility Fund scholarship awarded by Gdańsk (2012), Cultural Scholarship of the City of Gdańsk (2010), scholarship awarded by the Governor of the Pomeranian Province for creators of culture (2010) and a three-month art residency in Switzerland (2010). In October 2014, she obtained her PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.