Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė
Research and production grant part of the Collide programme - Arts at CERN & Ajuntament de Barcelona, BCN Fàbriques de Creació, Hangar
November 2022
Dorota Gawęda. PL/CH. 1986
Eglė Kulbokaitė. LT/CH. 1987
Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė are an artist duo living and working in Basel, CH. The artists work in multiples across performance, painting, sculpture, fragrance, and video installation – where language breaks down and one genre morphs into many. Transfusing different bodies of knowledge across space and time, Gawęda and Kulbokaitė nurture a research-based practice that weaves together seemingly disparate fields – ecology and technology, science and magic, nonhuman intelligence and shared speculation. An interest in folklore runs through their work – weirding the relationship between body and landscape through storytelling, opening up alternative states and temporalities through queerness and magic. It grafts onto the non-visual and non-linear, machine-hallucinated, olfactory, and ritualistic, as stories loosely tethered together by language. Fact, fiction and theory intertwine infused with scents, chants, and mythical characters.
Both Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 2012. They are the founders of the YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP (2013–2021). The artists have exhibited internationally including at: Shedhalle, Zürich (2022); ar ge Kunst, Bolzano (2022); Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna (2022); Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2022); Kunstverein Hamburg (2021); Istituto Svizzero, Palermo and Milan (2021); Kunstverein Leipzig (2021); Swiss Institute, New York (2020); Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2020); Fri Art – Kunsthalle Fribourg (2020); Futura, Prague (2019); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Spazio Maiocchi, Milan (2018); Cell Project Space, London (2018); 6th Athens Biennale (2018); Kunsthalle Basel (2017); ICA, London (2017); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2016); Kunstverein Düsseldorf (2016); Berlin Biennale 9 (2016); Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2015) among others. They are the recipients of the CERN Collide Residency 2022 and Enter the Hyper-Scientific (EPFL Lausanne) Residency 2022, and laureates of the Swiss Performance Art Award 2021.
