Marta Zgierska
Marta Zgierska, born in 1987, Lublin, Poland. She holds MFA in Photography (The Leon Schiller National Film, Television and Theatre School), MA in Theatrology and MA in Journalism (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University). In her artwork she deals with the subject of trauma, liminal experiences and associated tensions. After a serious car accident, her body, physically affected, naturally became a tool for studying reality. In her current works she is stitching painful performative process in colorful sweet aesthetics, taken from the visual code characteristic for the modern beauty industry, to tell about current opression of feminine body. She explores the canons of feminine beauty and undermines the pressure that the contemporary society exerts on the woman’s image. In 2015 she was named one of Lens Culture's Top 50 Emerging Talents. In 2016 she won one of the most prestigious photography awards – Prix HSBC pour la Photographie and also Daylight Photo Awards, Reminders Photography Stronghold Grant, FotoLeggendo Giovanni Tabo Prize and Kolga Tbilisi Photo Award. In the same year she was nominated for the ING Unseen Talent Award. Her project "Post" has been published as a book by Actes Sud in 2016. It received the PDN Photo Annual Award (2017). Her works were exhibited at Finnish Museum of Photography (Helsinki, 2017), International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum (Geneva, 2017), Museum Dr. Guislain (Ghent, 2017), Musee de la Photographie Andre Villers (Mougins, 2016), Galerie Esther Woerdehoff (Paris, 2016), Gowen Contemporary Gallery (Geneva, 2016 and 2019), Galerie Intervalle (Paris, 2017 and 2019), Unseen Amsterdam (2017), Artgenève (2019). Her works were presented also during numerous festivals, including Festival Circulation(s) and Athens Photo Festival. In 2018 and 2021 she was nominated for the prestigious Foam Paul Huf Award, in 2019 for the DZ BANK Art Collection Fellowship. In 2019 she was named Artist of the Year at the DongGang International Photo Festival in South Korea. Her works can be found in the collection of HSBC Foundation and in many private collections.
