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 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. 
 

 

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Anna Baumgart