The film is a visual essay about an impossible journey, not completed or made through someone else. The project examines to what extent the story of Miczika, the Evenian guide and Maria Antonina Czaplicka – the Polish anthropologist, is a universal story about power relations influencing how we view the world.

In my visual essay, Maria puts on a paper mask of "modernity" to protect her in contact with another culture. It was modernity, represented by Czaplicka in those territories, that brought violence - including educational violence - in the peoples of Siberia. The great project of modernism took away their agency and administrative power, and forbade them to cultivate shamanism.

(Anna Baumgart)

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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.

 

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

 

Anna Baumgart Baumgart/Pijarski. Photographic Laboratory, Curator, National Museum, Gdańsk, 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

 

Skip the Line! Populism and Unfulfilled Promises, group show Biennale, Warszawa (MA3450), Poland, 2018

 

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

 

Urbs Sacra, Mains d’oeuvres, Saint Ouen, France, 2017

 

Attention! Border, Arsenal Gallery, Białystok, Poland, 2017

 

Late Polishness Forms of national identity after 1989, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland, 2017

 

Young Poland – Afterimages of Reality, Ludwig Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, Hungary, 2016

 

De – Mo – Cra – Cy, Galeria Labirynt, BWA Lublin, Lublin, Poland, 2016

 

Sing, Slaves, Gallery of Contemporary Art Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków, Poland, 2016

 

The “Anything Goes” Museum, The National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland, 2015

 

Progress And Hygiene, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2014

 

Sights and Sounds: Poland, The Jewish Museum, New York City, NY, 2014

 

 

Anna Baumgart