Born in 1966 in Wrocław, Poland, Baumgart is an artist who represents a feminist perspective focused on personal problems and obsessions. She works in video, installation, performance and sculpture. Baumgart studied at the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, Poland, under the supervision of prof. Franciszek Duszeńko. In 1994-96 she co-founded Gdańsk Delikatesy Awangarda Gallery, Forum of Contemporary Art, Galeria Gazownia, and also realized the Video Art Salon project. In 1994, she created the artistic group ‘Tail of the Turtle’, and in 1998 she established the Office of Creative Initiatives. Along with artist Zbigniew Libera, she has founded the Cafe Baumgart / Libera (later Cafe Baumgart) art café at the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Poland (1999-2006). Baumgard’s main concern revolves around the feminine emotionality, relationships and patterns in education as demonstrated in her early video works Who Speaks? (1998), Mother (1999), Condoms, Money, Lady – No problem! (1999). In her video True? (2001) she placed her own figure into fragments of feature films (The Cranes are Flying by Michail Kalatozow and Miś by Stanisław Bareja). In the project Ecstatics, Hysterics and Other Saintly Ladies (2004) using the aesthetics of a documentary, she analysed the phenomenon of female auto-aggression and hysteria. In ‘Fresh Cherries’ (2011), produced for Falstad Kunst in Norway, Baumgart tackles some pivotal questions related to dealing with traumatic past and pursues a critical reflection of the contemporary “division of sensuality”. In Conquerors of the Sun (2012), she combines solemn judgement with a certain sentimentality and melancholy towards the past. She received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in 2005. She was awarded the First Prize at LOOP festival in Barcelona in 2011 for her video Fresh Cherries.
Bill Kouwenhoven ,The Uncanny and the Hypothetical in the Work of Anna Baumgart
Anna Baumgart Terytorium Komanczów / gazeta towarzysząca wystawie
Sprawa kobieca według Anny Baumgart, Dziennik Teatralny
ITS OWN KIND OF TRUTH, BY JÖRG HEISER
Anna Baumgart and Her Historiography Art, Contemporary Lynx
Responsibility for the Story, by Katarzyna Bojarska
REVOLUTION IS NOT A DINNER. THOUGH MAYBE?, Performance, BWA Bydgoszcz, Poland , 2019
Three plagues, Galeria Labirynt – BWA Lublin, Poland , 2019
Un monde, un seul, pour demeure, FRAC Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France, 2019
Nähe und Dystans, Brandeburgischer Landtag, Potsdam, Germany , 2019
Niepodległe: Women, Independence and National Discourse, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland , 2018
SLOWNESS INSPIRATIONS 2018, TRAFO, Szczecin, Poland, 2018
Kino-oko. Wok—? Wiertowa I Konstruktywizmu, Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, Poland, 2017
Anna Baumgart, Let’s Talk About Modernity, Jam Factory Art Center, 30 October – 10 Nov 2019
Anna Baumgart, Three Plaques, Labirynth Gallery, Lublin, Poland, 1 September – 10 November 2019
Anna Baumgart, Un monde, un seul, pour demeure, 13 July – 01 December 2019
Anna Baumgart, Nähe und Dystans, Brandeburgischer Landtag, 31 January – 28 December 2019
Anna Baumgart, Skip the Line! Populism and Unfulfilled Promises, 26 October – 30 November 2018