Alicja Rogalska is an artist living in London and working internationally. Her practice is research-led, interdisciplinary and focuses on social structures and the political subtext of the everyday. She mostly works in specific contexts making situations, performances, videos and installations in collaboration with other people. Her projects are attempts to practise a different political reality in the here and now, create space for many voices to be heard and to co-exist, whilst collectively searching for emancipatory ideas for the future. She has previously set up a temporary high street shop where people could cry together for and sell their tears for cash (Tear Dealer, with Łukasz Surowiec), asked local activists in Łódź to collectively articulate possible scenarios for future society under hypnosis (Dreamed Revolution), worked with street musicians in Jakarta on a song and music video about their working conditions (My Friend’s Job), designed a bronze potato prize for the best employer with agricultural migrant workers in Jersey (Agri Care) and asked refugees and asylum seekers in London who trained as lawyers to come up with new legal fictions in immigration law (What If As If).
Alicja Rogalska was the recipient of the third Stuart Hall Library Artist’s Residency in 2019, a funded opportunity that builds on Professor Stuart Hall’s unique contribution to intellectual and cultural life. The residency culminated in a screening and discussion about her work Citizens of Nowhere (2019), developed during the residency alongside two other videos. The three works are concerned with issues of citizenship, immigration and identity, viewed through the lenses of classification methods and systems, legal fictions in immigration law and the lived experiences of statelessness.
Rogalska graduated with an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College and an MA in Cultural Studies from Warsaw University. She was artist in residence at PARADISE AIR in Matsudo/Tokyo, MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, IASPIS in Stockholm, MeetFactory in Prague, National University of Colombia in Bogota and TATE Britain in London. She attended the Home Workspace programme at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, received grants from Arts Council England, Instytut Adama Mickiewicza, European Cultural Foundation and artist bursaries from Artsadmin and a-n. She is currently leading social practice Peer Forum at Peckham Platform/Artquest, participating in Syllabus IV and working on Radical Thinking, a solo commission for Focal Point Gallery and Art Exchange in collaboration with the Faculty of Social Sciences at Essex University.
Selected exhibitions include: Pangea United, Muzeum Sztuki (Łódź, 2019); Escape/Risk Change, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Rijeka, 2018-19), Singing in the Dark (solo), Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art (Chiba, 2018), New Poetics of Labour, Teatro Lido & Grafiformas (Medellín, 2018); Productive Work – what is that supposed to be?, frei_raum Q21, MuseumsQuartier (Vienna, 2018); For Beyond That Horizon Lies Another Horizon, Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst (Oldenburg, 2017-18); Gotong Royong. Things We Do Together, CCA Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw, 2017), Free Play, Västerås Konstmuseum (Västerås, 2017), Dreams and Dramas. Law as Literature, nGbK (Berlin, 2017); Social Design for Social Living, National Gallery (Jakarta, 2016); All Men Become Sisters, Muzeum Sztuki (Łódź, 2016-17); No Need For References, Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna, 2015); Rehearsal (solo), National Museum (Kraków, 2015); Critical Juncture, Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Kochi, 2014); A Museum of Immortality, Ashkal Alwan (Beirut, 2014); IMS Project, Flat Time House (London, 2013); Melancholy In Progress, Hong-Gah Museum (Taipei, 2012); Jour de Fête, The Private Space Gallery/LOOP Festival (Barcelona, 2011); To Look is to Labour, Laden Für Nichts (Leipzig, 2010) and No Soul For Sale, Tate Modern (London, 2010).