Marta Skoczeń (born in 1994 in Łódź, Poland) is a photographer and a visual artist working with video, photography and drawing. She graduated from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2020 (Clément Cogitore studio) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2019 (Graphic Art). In her work, she mainly focuses on femininity, memory, and the meeting of past and present, navigating between the field of visual art, cinema and fashion.
How to materialize in images the phenomena of expectation, isolation, presence, and its corollary absence? Through the joint practices of video and photography, Marta Skoczeń tries to answer these questions by poetically drawing the stories of women enclosed between four walls.
I wanted to show this need for movement which pushes us out of the reassuring dimension represented by our interiors throughout contact with nature. It makes me think of the paintings of 19th-century female artists where female subjects are represented in enclosed spaces, in all types of activities, such as sewing. These spaces were naturally assigned to women during this period. It is this image of the woman locked inside which I wish to symbolically liberate.
Psychological portraits in which gazes are alternately pressing, elusive, disillusioned, weary and with great intensity: for this, the artist favors the analog, a medium that she has loved since her adolescence for its softness and its sensitivity to light. There is this natural and evanescent finish that I try to convey in my photographs. When I work digitally, I deliberately break outlines that are far too sharp and perfect by nature. What I like is the delicacy in the treatment of colors specific to analog, she confides.
Through her videos, Marta Skoczeń has been exploring the theme of isolation, reinforced by the consequences of the pandemic. An intuitive work that mixes past-present, preparatory drawings, unconscious messages that dictate images to her in continuous research, but also texts that she writes and integrates into the editing. Inspired by the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron or Francesca Woodman, Marta reconstructs memories modified by the passage of time by giving a voice to all women.
Pauline Weber, Catalogue des diplômés, Beaux-Arts de Paris, 2021
Education
2016–2020 – École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Clément Cogitore and Patrick Tosani studios (video and photography)
2016 – Erasmus, École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, Printmaking
2013–2019 – Academy Of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Graphic Art
Continuous education
2021 – Fotografika, photography course
solo shows
2020 – Abri, Master's Degree, Beaux-Arts de Paris, Clément Cogitore studio, Paris
2019 – Czas zatrzymany, Master's Degree, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Piotr Smolnicki studio, Warsaw
2018 – Présence, Bachelor's Degree, Beaux-Arts de Paris, Patrick Tosani studio, Paris
2017 – inny czas, curator: Maciej Miller, Expositorium Art Gallery, Warsaw
2016 – Past Tense, curator: Miłosz Bojnarowicz, Onesto, Warsaw
group & two person shows
2022 (upcoming) – Terra Mater, curator: Marilou Thirache, Sid Lee, Paris
2021 – la Biennale de la jeune création contemporaine "Mulhouse 021", Motoco, Mulhouse
2020 (postponed) – Entre toi et moi, curator: Collectif 404, Fondation Ricard, Paris
2020 – ONAGAININZEBISTOUFLYEU, curator: Art Mercator, 44 rue Volta, Paris
2019 – Bâton de sourcier, curator: OFF.ON.FOCUS, Floréal Belleville, Paris
2019 – Bruit Noir, curator: Clément Cogitore, La Villa des Arts, Paris
2019 – atelier Lvovsky, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
2019 – Ukryte historie, with Urszula Łozińska, curator: Katarzyna Rysiak, Pracownia Duży Pokój, Warsaw
2018 – Au Fil..., Patrick Tosani studio, Beaux-Arts de Paris
2018 – Wschody, with Tomasz Hryciuk, Przestrzeń Mir’ów, Warsaw
2017 – Punkty wyjścia, with Aleksandra Przybysz, MYKO, Warsaw
2017 – Objets et Préjugées, curator: KulturElles, Médiathèque Edmond Rostand, Paris
2017 – Series of Dreams, curator: Patrick Faigenbaum, Pataut&Faigenbaum studio, Beaux-Arts de Paris
film festivals & projections
2021 – VASTLAB Experimental, Los Angeles
2021 – Forest Zoom, Machnacz
2021 – New Dreams International Film Festival, Los Angeles
2021 – UNKNOWN FILM FESTIVAL, Ekaterinburg (semi-finalist)
2021 – Berlin Revolution Film Festival, Berlin
2020 – Festival Fotogenia, Mexico
2020 – Proxy Act Festival, Berlin
2019 – Holywood Serbia International Film Festival, Boljkovci
2019 – Yale Student Festival, New Haven
2019 – Short Movie Club Festival, Minsk
Prizes
2021 – Ogólnopolski Konkurs Fotograficzny Portret, distinction, Poland
publications
2021 – Revue 02, France
2021 – Diagram, international
2021 – Artenders, France
2021 – Catalogue des diplômés, Beaux-Arts de Paris, France
2021 – Rundgang, Germany
2020 – Wizje, Poland
2020 – Helikopter, Poland
2017 – Polskie Radio Czwórka, Poland
2017 – Magazyn Artystyczny Spektrum, Poland
2017 – Whattaroll Magazine, international
talks
2022 – Anthropocene and the Mission of Transformation, symposium organized by Anna Szyjkowska-Piotrowska, PAN Paris
2021 – Samowyzwalacz Inspiracji, Poczytalnia, Legionowo, Poland
teaching experience
2018–now – Photography, Superprof, Paris
clients
2022 – Aspen, Warsaw
2022 – She Is Sunday, Warsaw/Sicily
2020–2022 – Meleniewska, Paris
2022 – Zuza Kot, Warsaw
2021 – Balenciaga, Paris
2021 – Best Secret, Warsaw
2021 – Balagan, Warsaw
collaborations
2021 – Céline Shen, Paris
2021 – Aleksandra Jendryka, Warsaw
2021 – High Numbers, Warsaw
2020 – Kai Kotto, Warsaw
internships
2019 – Providences, production assistant, Paris
2019 – Petite Maison Production, assistant director, Paris
2017 – Warsaw Documentary and Feature Film studios, assistant director, Warsaw
