Grzegorz Stefański
“Sarabande creates an environment that is very supportive and challenging at the same time. It not only offers studio space but also mentorship and opportunity of peer-to-peer discussion with other talented artists.”
Grzegorz Stefański (he/him), born in 1983 in Człuchów (Poland), is a Polish artist based in London since 2017. After earning his Master's degree in philosophy, he studied art under Mirosław Bałka at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and earned an MFA from The Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2018.
He works primarily with multi- and single-screen installations and photography. His practice, strongly influenced by phenomenology and performance, is located at the nexus of choreography, psychology and film. Revolving around physical ephemerality and the political power of gesture, his work focuses on identity and the politics of embodiment. The themes he investigates include power dynamics in relationships, masculinities, personal and historical trauma, memory and repetition.
His works have been exhibited and screened at the Louvre Museum (2019), HKW Berlin (2019), Whitechapel Gallery in London (2018), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2018), Ujazdowski Castle Centre of Contemporary Art in Warsaw (2018), Manifesta 11 in Zurich (2016). In 2017 he won the Ivan Juritz Prize in London and the Grand Prix at the Biennale of Young Art in Poland. In 2020 he received the Stuart Croft Foundation Award.
He is currently working on a new film installation commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London and on the second part of a film triptych exploring care-violence relational dynamics supported by the Stuart Croft Foundation (The first part was created in Tokyo in 2023). He also continues infra-red video series sleepers as part of ongoing research on masculinity.
