Goshka Macuga

Goshka Macuga was born in 1967 in Warsaw, Poland and lives and works in London. Macuga’s practice is based on historical and archival research, which informs her installations, sculptures, tapestries, and collages. As an artist she simultaneously assumes the role of a curator, historian, and exhibition designer. Macuga questions historiography, political structures, and the pressing issues of our time. Over the past years, Macuga has created a series of large-scale tapestries that weave her ideas in assembly mind maps, presentations, and panoramic scenes. Macuga takes up the historical medium of Gobelin tapestries, a portable textile often emblazoned with political messages. Her new series of tapestries are woven in 3-D so that the viewers themselves become part of the scenario.

In 2019, Macuga was commissioned to make a large-scale tapestry for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The work re-stages a well-known photograph of Andre Malraux taken in 1954, featuring Macuga surrounded by images that are intrinsically linked to MoMA’s history and collection. Solo exhibitions include Born From Stone, London Mithraeum Bloomberg Space, London (2024); In Flux, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain (2022) and MUSAC, León, Spain (2021); Stairway to Nowhere, Kestnergesselchaft, Hannover, Germany (2019); What Was I ?, Prada Rong Zhai, Shanghai, China (2019); Intellectual Co-operation, Neues Museum, Nüremberg, Germany (2018); To the Son of Man Who Ate the Scroll, Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2016); Now this, is this the end... the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? (part 1), Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin, Germany (2016); Time as Fabric, New Museum, New York, USA (2016); Exhibit A, MCA Chicago, USA (2012); Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland (2011); It Broke from Within, Walker Arts Centre, Minneapolis, USA (2011); The Bloomberg Commission, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2009); I Am Become Death, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2009) and Objects in Relation, Tate Britain, London (2007).  

Recent group exhibitions include ImPOSSIBLE, Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany (2024); Paraventi: Folding Screens from the 17th to 21st Centuries, Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2023-4); HARD/SOFT: Textiles and Ceramics in Contemporary Art, Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), Vienna, Austria (2023); Public Matters: Contemporary Art in the Belvedere Garden, Vienna, Austria (2023); Everybody Talks About the Weather, Fondazione Prada, Venice, Italy (2023); Hollow Earth: Art, Caves & The Subterranean Imaginary, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK (2022); Supernatural, Kunsthalle Tubingen, Germany (2020) and Like Life: Sculpture, Colour and the Body (1300-Now), The Met Breuer, New York, USA (2018). Macuga was included in Documenta 2012 and nominated for the Turner Prize in 2008. She was elected a Royal Academican in 2024.