Anna Baumgart – l’étrangère

Ecstatics, Hysterics and Other Saintly Ladies (2004) is a story of self-aggression, female fears of loneliness, lack of acceptance, intimate rituals carried out at home. The video was shown at an exhibition Global Feminisms at Brooklyn Museum NYC in 2007.

'I’m tempted by the possibility of redefining the notion of ‘hysteria’, the transformation from an offensive epithet into a compliment. For me hysterics sounds interesting, it’s a synonym of a creative approach of women to the world, a rebellious or even revolutionary stance. Something that feminism has already discovered and analysed on the basis of the 19th century hysteria – it’s a sort of self-art – it has never been accepted in the social consciousness.'

(Anna Baumgart)

See the video on the Warsaw's Museum of modern art website

Anna Baumgart »
Ecstatic, Hysteric and Saintly Ladies

Anna BaumgartEcstatic, Hysteric and Saintly Ladies2004film10' 40''.Editon of 3 + 1AP

Born in 1966 in Wrocław, Poland, Anna Baumgart is a multimedia artist who represents a feminist perspective focused on personal, often hidden, problems and obsessions, also delving into the subject of the “Other”. She works in video, installation, performance, sculpture, and artistic tattoo.

In 1994 Baumgart graduated from the department of sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. In 1995 she received the Award of the City of Gdańsk for the Most Interesting Debut. In the 1990s she collaborated with the most important centers of the Polish artistic scene: Wyspa Gallery, Spichż 7 Gallery, Baltic Cultural Center and CCA Łaźnia. Baumgart has taken part in the most important shows of Polish art at home and abroad. In 2004 Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw organised her exhibition in tandem with Birgit Brenner. She has received stipends from Fundacja Kultury (2001) and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2005). She was awarded the First Prize at LOOP festival in Barcelona in 2011 for her video Fresh Cherries. Baumgart’s works are in the collections of Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Lublin, Museum of Art in Frankfurt a/M, and in private collections.

Click to download the artist’s CV

Dominik Czechowski, There is nothing less certain than the past, Postmedium

Bill Kouwenhoven ,The Uncanny and the Hypothetical in the Work of Anna Baumgart

Décalages, ParisArt,

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

Postcards from Warsaw, Frieze

Culture.pl

REVOLUTION IS NOT A DINNER. THOUGH MAYBE?, Performance, BWA Bydgoszcz, Poland, 2019