Goshka Macuga RA Elect (b. 1967)

Goshka Macuga was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1967. She has lived in London since 1989. She completed her BA (Hons) in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College in London and her Master Degree in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths University of London.

Goshka Macuga is an interdisciplinary artist working across media including sculpture, installation, photography and video. Her practice connects different areas and methods of research. Her inquiries are often focused on institutional histories proposing unconventional associative readings of their social and political histories. Macuga’s strategic orchestration of existing materials, collectables and archival documents support the reframing of established narratives.

She was included in Documenta 13 in 2012 in Kassel, Germany and Kabul, Afghanistan; 8th Berlin Biennale, Museen Dahlem, Berlin, Germany; 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany; 53rd Venice Biennale: Fare Mondi//Making Worlds, Corderie dell’Arsenale, Venice, Italy; How to Live Together, 27th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2008. In 2013 she was given an Annual Award of the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the field of visual arts. Her work is included in numerous public collections including Tate, MoMA, Government Art Collection, Arts Council Collection, MCA Chicago, Walker Art Center, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, Neues Museum, Nuremberg and Castello di Rivoli.

In 2023 she created a sculpture titled GONOGO for Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, exhibited at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. The initial proposal for the sculpture was shortlisted for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London in 2021. In 2019, she conceived Exhibition M, a large-scale commission for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

She has had solo exhibitions at the New Museum, New York, USA; Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy; Neues Museum, Nüremberg, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA; Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK; Tate Britain, London, UK; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Walker Arts Centre, Minneapolis, USA; Museo de arte contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), Spain, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain.