Miroslaw Balka is a sculptor also active in the field of experimental video and drawing, born inWarsaw, Poland.
In 1985 he graduated from theWarsaw Academy of Fine Arts,[2] where since 2011 he has run the Studio of Spatial Activities in the Faculty of Media Art. Professor nominated by President of Poland in 2012. Between 1986 and 1989 together with Miroslaw Filonik and Marek Kijewski he established the artistic group Consciousness Neue Bieremiennost. He is a member ofAkademie der Künste,Berlin.
He was the 1991 winner of theMies van der Rohe Stipendium from the KunstmuseumKrefeld.[3] In 2009, Balka installedHow It Is, the 10thUnilever Series commission for the Turbine Hall atTate Modern,London, which opened on 13 October of that year.[4][5][6]
He lives and works in Otwock, Poland, and Oliva, Spain.
The work of Mirosław Bałka is interdisciplinary but centres aroundsculpture and installation. The sculptor's work is influenced by family background: his grandfather was a gravestone cutter while his father engraved names on tombstones. The themes of many works revolve around historical traumatic events and memories, particularly the memory ofWorld War II.[7][8]
Initially Bałka created figurative works; later the artist shifted towards more abstract, monumental forms. These remained related to the subject of thehuman existence - the body in life, death and decay, personal and collective memory.[9] The artist frequently uses steel, cement, salt, foam rubber and felt in his sculptures.[7]
Miroslaw Balka has participated in major exhibitions worldwide including: Venice Biennale (1990, 2003, 2005, 2013; representing Poland in 1993), documenta IX, Kassel (1992), Sydney Biennale (1992, 2006), The Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (1995), Sao Paulo Biennale (1998), Liverpool Biennial (1999), Santa Fe Biennale (2006). In 2009 he presented the special projectHow It Is for the Unilever Series, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London. He is the author of the Memorial to the Victims of the Estonia Ferry Disaster in Stockholm (1997), and numerous spatial works includingAUSCHWITZWIELICZKA, Cracow (2010), andHEAL, University of California, San Francisco (2009).
A series of conversations between Miroslaw Balka and professor Zygmunt Bauman were published in 2013.
He has participated in panel discussions with many distinguished speakers including Juan Vicente Aliaga, Julian Heynen, Anda Rottenberg, Kasia Redzisz, Anja Rubik, Joseph Rykwert and Vicente Todoli.
He designed the scenery forPaweł Mykietyn's composition:The Magic Mountain (opera, 2015[10]) andHerr Thaddäus (2017).[11]
