Voids_3, linocut, collagraph,
12×15 cm 2024
12 - 17 October 2024
Katarzyna Zimna
Different shapes of voids
In March and April 2023 Katarzyna Zimna participated in the EU funded research project “Sustainable Industrial Design of Textile Structures for Composites” at the Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås. At the same time she was accepted as a part-time artist in residence at the Ålgården Print Workshop. Being an artist teaching at the Lodz University of Technology (Poland), in Borås she again entered a space in-between two worlds – artistic and scientific, of metaphors and facts, ideas and materials.
A composite is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials that have notably dissimilar chemical or physical properties and are merged to create a material with properties unlike the individual elements.
During her first day in Borås she participated in the research seminar devoted to composites and their failures.
Voids are damages, defects – pores that remain unfilled with polymer and fibers in a composite material.
This is where the title of her project and the exhibition came from. As an artist she explores relationships between various layers composing reality – natural and man-made, emotional and intellectual, corporeal and spiritual. She looks for “voids”, because the perfect “composite” does not exist.
The exhibition consists of a body of works created in Borås or inspired by this stay: prints made with relief techniques (linocut, collagraph, and artist’s own technique – matrices made with grains and salt) and works made with the use of hemp and PLA nonwovens and composites that were the subject of the research carried at the University of Borås. The narrative layer refers to the observation of Swedish nature – changing of seasons at the Öresjö and Byttorpssjön lakes, and also to the experience of visiting Kypegården sauna (that became an inspiration for a Sauna series of graphic works), acting as a catalyst for reflection about the bodily, feminine experience of change, transformation and transience of life cycles.
Information about the artist:
Katarzyna Zimna is an artist and researcher living and working in Lodz, Poland. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Lodz in 2002. PhD from the School of Art and Design, Loughborough University, UK in 2010. Habilitation in Fine Arts in 2019. Author of Time to Play. Action and Interaction in Contemporary Art(I.B. Tauris, 2014/ Bloomsbury 2020). Associate Professor at the Institute of Architecture of Textiles at the Lodz University of Technology.
Participant in numerous group and juried shows in Poland and abroad, printmaking biennials and triennials. Author of 18 solo shows. Participant of IMPACT International Multidisciplinary Printmaking Conferences in Hangzhou 2015, Santander 2018, Hongkong 2021, Bristol 2022 and the Paradox European Biennial Art Forum in Riga (Latvia) in 2019. In 2020 she was awarded a honorary medal at the International Triennial of Small Graphic Forms, Lodz, Poland.
In her practice the artist explores the expanded field of printmaking medium, including object, textile and relational projects. The matrix, the print substrate, the process of printing, the final printout and lastly the ‘post-print’ area, including the relationship with the viewer, become starting points for formal and conceptual journeys. Some inspirations come from innovative materials that she works with at the Lodz University of Technology. Ecology, permaculture, feminism and the new materialism are the main conceptual strands of her art. She often explores the issues of feminine values and identities, inspired by her everyday roles and chores, growing the garden and raising two daughters.
Acknowledgements
The research project and the organisation costs of the exhibition were largely covered by:
HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03/Twinning Project SustDesignTex (GA No. 101079009), title: “Sustainable Industrial Design of Textile Structures for Composites” funded by the European Union
Part of the project was carried at the Ålgården Printmaking Workshop and Gallery
Hemp-PLA non woven, lasercut, 18×18 cm 2023
Sauna series_grain and salt, linocut, artist’s own technique,
2x50x70cm, 2024