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ZUZANNA JANIN
(b. 1961 in Poland. Lives and works in Warsaw and London.)
Zuzanna Janin is a visual artist and former teen actor, having in her youth starred in the Polish TV serial Szalenstwo Majki Skowron (Madness of Majka Skowron). Having turned her talents to visual art, Janin studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Warsaw (1980-87), and in 2016 completed her PhD at the University of the Arts in Poznan, Poland. Throughout her diverse practice of sculpture, video, photography installation, and performative actions, Zuzanna Janin deals with the subject of space, time and memory, as well as the problem of exclusion and absence. The main theme of her work is a conceptual approach to the visualization of processes, changes, comparisons, continuity, what’s “in between.” Janin transforms fragments of private memory, comingling her own experience with collective memory and images of universal history, contemporary social and political problems.
Alongside countless others, significant works include: the processual sculptures of wire and cotton candy Sweet Girl, Sweet Boy (2001); the spatial photographic installation Follow Me. Change Me (2001) and related video installation The Fight (IloveYouToo) (2001), which shows the artist fighting in the ring with a professional boxer; the video-installation SHAME (Tar and Feathers) (2016); the sculpture installation Volvo Transformed Into Drones (2014-2015); and the series of sculptures from epoxy resin Anthropocene Sculptures (2014- 2020), which include: Seven Fathers (2016), Monument of Teenager. Triple Portrait (Majka Melania Zuzanna) (2019), and Home Transformed into Geometric Solids (2016-2018). She creates an ongoing social media photo project on Facebook and on her blog From the Series Home Sculptures (rzezbydomowe.blogspot.com). In 2004-20010 Janin created the fictional televiZJon_studio, adapting the common format of TV programs to invite curators to participate in an Art Talk Show.
Zuzanna Janin has taken part in a number of international Biennals, including the Sydney Biennial (1992), Istanbul Biennial (1992), Soonsbeek (1993), Liverpool Biennial (1996), Łódź Biennale (2010), 54th Venice Biennale (2011) (in the official program of Romania). She had a solo shows, screenings and performances at: Foksal Gallery Warsaw, Kunsthalle Wien, MAM Rio de Janeiro, Salzburger Kunstverein, National Museum Cracow and Warsaw. Group exhibition include: Whitechapel Gallery, London; Royal School of Art, Edinburg; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Jeu de Pomme Paris; Japanese Palace, Dresden; Kunstmuseum Bern; Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin; TOP Museum Tokyo; Foundation Miro, Barcelona; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Gallery Zacheta, Warsaw; Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Ludwig Museum, Aachen; Kunstmuseum Bern; Kunsthalle, Bern; Hoffmann Collection, Berlin; TT The THING, NY.
Zuzanna Janin is a member of the board of Foundation Lokal Sztuki and Foundation Place of Art – both NGOs involved in promoting contemporary art and artists. Together with Agnieszka Rayzacher, Zuzanna Janin created the art program (exhibitions, talks, meetings) at the independent art space lokal_30 in Warsaw (2005-2012) and the second temporary space lokal_30_warszawa_london in London (2009-2010). Since 2018 Janin is a member of the Committee of Maria Anto & Elsa von Freytag Art Prize.
Since 2019, Zuzanna Janin is a lecturer in Postgraduate Study of Contemporary Art at the Polish Academy of Science (PAN) in Warsaw, Poland. Janin was Guest Professor in a number of universities, incuding: Academy of Fine Art Cracow (Poland) , ASAB Academia del Arte, Bogota (Colombia), Sapir College of Art in Sderot , (Israel), Haifa University (Israel), Academy of Fine Art Bratislava (Slovakia) , Bezalel Jerusalem (Israel), Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw (Poland) , Academy of Fine Art Warsaw and King’s College London (UK) and took part in conferences, meetings and talks in many other art institutions.
PAS DE DEUX (2001)
2001, Video, 5 min
With a title appropriated from ballet, Zuzanna Janin’s Pas De Deux (2001) is a work perpetually relevant in a time when we are all dancing around the issues. Shot in a jerking close-up of two pairs of legs in constant motion on a blank white background, we are drawn into what could be a dance as readily as a fight. It is a dialogue between two bodies, a give and take of power and physical space. It is also a different perspective on one of Janin’s best-known works, the video installation The Fight (IloveYouToo) (2001), where the slight, fragile-looking artist takes on a professional heavyweight boxer. To create this work, Janin spent 6 months training with him in the ring. The boxing match in The Fight is real and harrowing to watch in its intensity. In this work, the camera weaves in and out, dodging and feinting with the fighter’s blows, as close-up and personal as the physical act of combat.
Yet for Janin, this combat between two mismatched opponents is also a dance, a language allowing two bodies to communicate. The direct perspective of the camera in The Fight draws us into the brutality of this uneven combat. But changing the perspective and dropping the camera to ground level suddenly reveals the ambiguity lurking beneath the violence. For Pas De Deux, Janin’s fight performance is shot with the intimacy of a camera moving with the two bodies as they follow the same motions as The Fight, but without seeing the blows. The violent mismatch is transfigured into a match, a term which in sports signifies a contest between opposing competitors, whilst in normal usage it means a harmonious pair.