A Book at the Museum. Change of Life. A Monograph by Monika Mamzeta

“Monika Mamzeta: Change of Life. A Monograph” summarizes 30 years of Monika Mamzeta’s artistic practice. It includes both visual material in the form of photographs of the artist’s works and activities, as well as interviews with her and critical essays on her work.

Creating a book dedicated to Monika Mamzeta’s work was quite a challenge. Although she has been active for over thirty years, the artist had not yet had a monograph published; our task, therefore, was to present her work from the mid-1990s to the present, that is, the year 2026. It would be a truism to say that everything has changed during this time. One thing is certain—after numerous personal and professional twists and turns, the artist is working again, developing new projects, and expanding her scope of activity, for example by creating an independent sculpture project—the Portrait Firm. Her areas of interest have not changed —she continues to focus on broadly defined themes of emancipation, which she explores by incorporating personal experiences of pregnancy and motherhood, illness, menopause, relationships with her now-adult children, and difficult family conversations and reckonings. The texts we have selected come from various periods of the artist’s career; thus, this collection can be regarded as a kind of anthology that includes both historical (though updated) essays and contemporary texts. Agata Jakubowska, an art historian specializing in feminist art, focused on analyzing Mamzeta’s most recognizable work—“genealogy/gynecology [my mother’s scar]” (1999), while sociologist Elżbieta Korolczuk examined her work from the perspective of a critical analysis of family relationships. Among the more recent texts, we have included a comprehensive overview of the artist’s work by art historian and curator Monika Przypkowska, as well as a personal essay by art critic Monika Weychert, as well as a text by Paweł Możdżyński written from the perspective of the sociology of art. Also included is a text by Agnieszka Tarasiuk, accompanying Mamzeta’s exhibition, which took place at the Alina Foundation in Warsaw in the spring of 2026, as well as a commentary by Agnieszka Rayzacher on the exhibition at lokalu_30, which took place in the fall of 2025. The volume is rounded out by an interview with the artist conducted by Monika Stelmach, as well as a chronology of the most important events in Mamzeta’s life and career.