Papers by Joanna Szupinska
Art Margins, 2025
[FORTHCOMING]
In her 1965 essay "Lustro rzeczywistości czy uległe tworzywo" [mirror of reality, ... more [FORTHCOMING]
In her 1965 essay "Lustro rzeczywistości czy uległe tworzywo" [mirror of reality, or submissive material], presented here in its first English translation as "Reflection or Creation," Urszula Czartoryska investigates the photographic medium's capacity for creative intervention. Among her case studies are Polish photographers Karol Hiller, Zbigniew Dłubak, and Fortunata Obrąpalska, whom she situates as interconnected, international artists working within a context that encompasses France, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The introduction to the translation argues that Czartoryska's approach not only sought to legitimize Polish photography within a broader history of modernism, but also created the conditions of possibility for future forms of artistic subjectivity in a socialist context.
October, 2022
This conversation between Jarosław Suchan, director of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland, from 2006 t... more This conversation between Jarosław Suchan, director of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland, from 2006 to 2022, and grupa o.k., the collaborative endeavor of Julian Myers and Joanna Szupinska, addresses the current political crisis in Poland under the rule of the ethnocentric right-wing populist party Law and Justice and its effects on art-institutions in that country. It addresses Suchan's innovative approach to the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, which he sees as internationalist and emancipatory, and explores the circumstances of his dismissal by forces within the ultra-conservative government. It provides Suchan's parsing of disparate factions within the ruling party, his critical analysis of their aims to advance a whitewashed view of Polish history, his efforts to produce a counternarrative to this “new historical politics,” and his hopes and fears for a Polish cultural scene under right-wing populist direction.
Art Journal, 2017
An annotated bibliography on the history of exhibitions before 1990.
Reviews by Joanna Szupinska
Art Journal, 2019
An essay-review of Harald Szeemann exhibitions and publications in 2018.
caa.reviews, 2014
Review of the exhibition David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition at the de Young Museum
Journal of Curatorial Studies, 2012
Essays by Joanna Szupinska
Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures, 2022
This essay considers Christina Fernandez’s 1999 photographic series Untitled Multiple Exposures, ... more This essay considers Christina Fernandez’s 1999 photographic series Untitled Multiple Exposures, exploring the artist’s engagement with Mexican modernist photography and its reinterpretation through her own Chicana identity. By way of re-photography and double exposure, the works juxtapose self-portraits with historical images of Indigenous women by photographers such as Manuel Álvarez Bravo. This act of visual dialogue interrogates issues of gender, race, and cultural inheritance, highlighting the tension between proximity and distance, empathy and alienation. The essay positions Untitled Multiple Exposures as a profound meditation on the complexities of cultural memory, artistic agency, and the politics of seeing.
The Avant-Garde Museum, 2021
"Bachelor Modernism" reconstructs the 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art Arranged by the... more "Bachelor Modernism" reconstructs the 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art Arranged by the Société Anonyme, a modernist exhibiting society led by Katherine Dreier and Marcel Duchamp. Among other things, this exhibition was the only public display of Duchamp's Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) in its original state before shattering. The essay argues that the exhibition embodied a critical tension between Dreier's milennarian vision of an internationalist and cosmic modernism, and Duchamp's premonition of a "bachelor modernism" mired in perpetual churn and failure.
Mousse, 2015
A consideration of reproduction centered on the artist Rodney McMillian.
Konstrukcja w Procesie: The Community that Came, 2012
Journal of Curatorial Studies, 2012
Konstrukcja w Procesie/Construction in Process featured work by 54 international artists in an ab... more Konstrukcja w Procesie/Construction in Process featured work by 54 international artists in an abandoned nineteenth-century textile factory in Łódź, Poland in 1981. It was a curious, multi-layered exhibition that brought together unresolved politics, a curatorial method of 'sorting out' or 'arranging for', and a bohemian approach to life and art that looked back to the European avant-gardes of the 1930s. This article aims to reveal that, via the organizers' collaboration with Solidarity, the exhibition not only rejected the political bodies in power, but strove to articulate a proposal for an altogether new socio-political reality.
Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity, 2012
"Occupying Skyscrapers" examines the symbolic and socio-political dimensions of skyscrapers throu... more "Occupying Skyscrapers" examines the symbolic and socio-political dimensions of skyscrapers through the lens of contemporary art and urban protest. Through works such as Shizuka Yokomizo's Dear Stranger series, Michael Wold's Transparent City series, and Fikret Atay's video work Tinica, the essay explores how skyscrapers embody themes of transparency, alienation, and power. These towering structures are considered both oppressive facades and potential sites of democratic reinvention, as demonstrated in the Occupy movement’s reclamation of urban spaces. Through a focus on how architecture mediates public and private life, the essay interrogates modernity’s promises and failures, highlighting the tension between symbolic defiance and the human realities of urban existence.
HSz: as is/ as if, 2010
"Grandfather: A History Like Ours" delves into Harald Szeemann's 1974 exhibition Grossvater—Ein P... more "Grandfather: A History Like Ours" delves into Harald Szeemann's 1974 exhibition Grossvater—Ein Pionier wie wir (Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us), an intimate tribute to the curator's late paternal grandfather, Etienne Szeemann. The exhibition transformed a private apartment gallery in Bern into an installation showcasing Etienne's personal belongings, such as hairstyling tools, memoirs, and artifacts, reflecting his life as an immigrant and master hairdresser. This essay emphasizes the exhibition’s layered meanings, arguing for its significance beyond mere institutional critique or personal expression.
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Papers by Joanna Szupinska
In her 1965 essay "Lustro rzeczywistości czy uległe tworzywo" [mirror of reality, or submissive material], presented here in its first English translation as "Reflection or Creation," Urszula Czartoryska investigates the photographic medium's capacity for creative intervention. Among her case studies are Polish photographers Karol Hiller, Zbigniew Dłubak, and Fortunata Obrąpalska, whom she situates as interconnected, international artists working within a context that encompasses France, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The introduction to the translation argues that Czartoryska's approach not only sought to legitimize Polish photography within a broader history of modernism, but also created the conditions of possibility for future forms of artistic subjectivity in a socialist context.
Reviews by Joanna Szupinska
Essays by Joanna Szupinska
In her 1965 essay "Lustro rzeczywistości czy uległe tworzywo" [mirror of reality, or submissive material], presented here in its first English translation as "Reflection or Creation," Urszula Czartoryska investigates the photographic medium's capacity for creative intervention. Among her case studies are Polish photographers Karol Hiller, Zbigniew Dłubak, and Fortunata Obrąpalska, whom she situates as interconnected, international artists working within a context that encompasses France, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The introduction to the translation argues that Czartoryska's approach not only sought to legitimize Polish photography within a broader history of modernism, but also created the conditions of possibility for future forms of artistic subjectivity in a socialist context.