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Monika Niwelinska

Associate Professor, Adjunct

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Bio

Education Ph.D. in Fine Arts (2013), MFA (2004, diploma with honors), Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland, MFA (2007), University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada/ Department of Art and Design, Habilitation (Venia Legendi - postdoctoral degree in Fine Arts, 2021), Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow Exhibitions MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, Austria, California Center for Photography, Los Angeles, Balzer Projects, Basel, Switzerland, Norway, Bodø Kunstforening, Norway, PrintArt Fair, Hamburg, Germany, Terres de l’est Gallery, Paris, France, Archeological Museum in Krakow, Baltic Gallery of Art, Poland, F.A.B. Gallery, Edmonton, Canada, Kulturpark, Slovakia, Otwarta Pracownia, Krakow, Poland, Cellar Gallery, Krakow, Krakow Palace of the Art, Poland, Grunwald Gallery of Art, IN, USA, Entropia Gallery, Wroclaw, Poland, The Land Art and Site Specific Biennial 2015, Kjerringøy, Norway, Interprint 2008, LLC London, U.K., Bunkier Gallery of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Poland, Alberta Gallery of Art, Edmonton, Canada Awards Fulbright Senior Award (2016-17), Kosciuszko Foundation Scholarship (2019), Young Poland Scholarship (2008), Art Award of the City of Krakow (2003), Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland Scholarship (2006, 2014, 2020), Erasmus+ EU Grant (2013), Central Europe Exchange Program for University Studies (CEEPUS) Scholarship (2001), City of Krakow Scholarship (2022), EU Socrates/Erasmus Scholarship (2001/02, studies at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, Austria) Collections International Print Triennial, Krakow, Poland, Print Study Centre, UofA Museums and Collections, Canada, Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland, Fondazione Italo-Svedese in Venice, Italy, Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland, Jan Fejkiel Gallery, Krakow, Poland, Art Institute, Krakow, Poland, University of the Arts, Londyn, U.K., LACDA Los Angeles Center For Digital Art, Los Angeles, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, The Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) USA, IMPRINT Contemporary Graphic Arts Collection, numerous private collections.

Personal Statement

Monika Niwelinska is a visual artist working in the media of installation, printmaking, and photography (photosensitive processes). Her artistic practice embraces the areas of memory and perception, especially the internal recording of place and time and its visual translation into a tangible image. She is interested in tracing connections and tensions between presence and absence, appearance and disappearance – a narrative that resonates around the concepts of melancholy, memory and loss; traces, remains and time. In her work, Niwelinska explores the idea of photography as an analogue of trauma; particularly in the context of direct exposure, which can be interpreted as trace or remains of a traumatic event. Niwelinska's projects examine the relationships between photosensitivity and place, with a focus on post-traumatic sites and their visual representations.

The theme of radioactivity and a unique bond between photosensitivity and radiation remain the main subject of her work. Niwelinska’s recent interests embrace the topography of Shoah and post-Holocaust spaces. (Post)memory and hidden presence of the past: tracing and exposure of invisible trauma; materiality of the traces. Her work often refers to the official representations of historical events as well as the visual languages and apparatuses that produce them, underlining that history in many respects is the history of recording devices and technologies, but also materiality.

In her research-based art practice she developed the concept of the entropic image – a photosensitive image, subject to organically evolving processes of change and destruction, oscillating somewhere between visible and invisible. Through a broad range of experiments in technology and visual aspects of photosensitive image she examines potentially new areas of application of light-sensitive medium in visual arts outside its natural context of classic photography.

Professional Background

Niwelinska holds a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) and a postdoctoral degree (habilitation) in the field of Fine Arts. Her education, pedagogical background and artwork are rooted in printmedia, installation, and photography, with a strong conceptual and research-oriented approach. Both of her MFA diplomas degrees (in Poland and Canada) were focusing on the intersection between photography and printmaking, her Ph.D. dissertation (“Latent Image”) – on relations between photosensitivity and radioactivity, as well as on the ontology of the photographic image. The topic was further developed in extensive postdoctoral research and a series of projects, which became a part of a multi-thread visual narrative “Other Entropies”. In 2021 she obtained habilitation (Venia Legendi), a postdoctoral degree in Fine Arts.

Monika Niwelinska is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland – Department of Graphic Arts (Master of Fine Arts degree, diploma with honors, 2004) and the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada – Department of Art and Design (Master of Fine Arts, 2007). She also studied Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. In 2007 she was appointed at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland as an Associate Professor in the Department of Graphic Arts (Division of Drawing and Painting).

In 2019, before joining SAIC’S faculty, she was a Visiting Artist in the Department of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), USA, working on a “Blue Neutrino” project, in cooperation with the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, IL - realized within the frames of Kosciuszko Foundation Senior Fellowship. Currently, Niwelinska is teaching topic and research-based courses in the Departments of Photography as well as Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), USA.

Monika Niwelinska is a Fulbright alumna. Thanks to the prestigious Fulbright scholarship (Fulbright Senior Award 2016-2017), she completed a one-year residency at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, RI, USA, working on a project "Hidden Entropy" - photosensitive record and visual imagery of radioactive spaces. Visual and conceptual research on memory trace in relation to place and space. The project included a field trip to the Trinity Site in New Mexico where the artist realized an onsite project γ [gamma trace].

Niwelinska has contributed to numerous individual and collective exhibitions in the US, Europe, and worldwide. Native of Krakow, Poland, currently lives and works in Chicago, USA.

Selected Texts and Publications

– Martyna Nowicka’s interview with the artist: Szum Magazine, 2016

– Klaudia Muca’s text about the artist: Visualizing Catastrophy. Niwelinska, Aleksijewich and Nuclear Critique, in: Machine of Thought

– Agnieszka Kwiecień, Krzysztof Siatka, “Fragile” nr 1/2015; Loss of the Image. Conversation with Monika Niwelinska

– Alternative News ASP, 2018, edited by Iwona Demko, “Conversation with Monika Niwelinska”, Sylwia Rams, pages: 60-63

– Mary Christa O’Keefe, “Vue Weekly” no. 637 from 02.01.2008: Pop and privacy made this year not suck. Best of 2007: Monika Niwelinska, Tsunami series

– Erinne Fenwick, “The Gateway” z 15.09.2007: Life, death, and prints that capture the in between

– Mary Christa O’Keefe, “Vue Weekly” no. 622 from 19.09.2007: Monika Niwelinska's long wave Goodbye

– "Procesy, sedymentacje, topografie. O polskim dokumencie fotograficznym; ["Processes,Sedimentations, Topographies. Photographic Document in Poland."], collected essays on photography edited by Marianna Michałowska and Maciej Szymanowicz

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course is designed for students who have a basic knowledge of photography and its materials and an interest in the use of the photo image as part of a broad vocabulary of image-making processes. Students explore cyanotype, van dyke brown, gum bichromate printing, collage, reproduction, and transfer techniques, and are given a basic working knowledge of the graphic arts films and print films. Also covered: Polaroid materials, copy machines, computer graphics, and applied color. Ideas related to text, installation, and performance may also be explored. Each student is encouraged to experiment in both silver and non-silver processes and to conduct research independently.

Class Number

1803

Credits

3

Description

This course is designed for students who have a basic knowledge of photography and its materials and an interest in the use of the photo image as part of a broad vocabulary of image-making processes. Students explore cyanotype, van dyke brown, gum bichromate printing, collage, reproduction, and transfer techniques, and are given a basic working knowledge of the graphic arts films and print films. Also covered: Polaroid materials, copy machines, computer graphics, and applied color. Ideas related to text, installation, and performance may also be explored. Each student is encouraged to experiment in both silver and non-silver processes and to conduct research independently.

Class Number

1519

Credits

3

Description

Transnational Temporalities: Interdisciplinary Research and Practice is a required course for international and AICAD exchange students who are new to SAIC, but have already completed a substantial amount of advanced level or independent coursework. Students enrolled in this class will use utilize both traditional and experimental research methodologies, access the many archives and resources available at SAIC and across Chicago, and participate in a vigorous studio-based critical dialogue about their studio work with a global awareness. The course will encourage students to make connections between this class and their respective areas of studio interest or specialization ¿ through recognition of global identities (otherness and representation, deconstructing difference, decolonization), global contextualization, global art history and it's asymmetries, as well as subject driven themes in global contemporary art: place, time, memory, materiality, body, identity, language, science, among others.
To make engaging art requires the artist to recognize the cultural context of their time, to think critically in regards to that context, and to make art or design works in response. The more an artist or designer seeks to problematize and add greater complexity to what interests them, the more polyvocal their practice will become. Examples of artists and designers to be addressed in this course include: Richard Tufte, Shirin Neshat, Hito Steyerl, Zhang Huan, Mark Lombardi, Tehching Hsieh, Christian Boltanski, Kara Walker, Song Dong, Cai Guo-Qiang, Brian Jungen, Nick Cave, Doris Salcedo, Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Marina Abramovic, Ai Weiwei, Andy Goldsworthy, Roni Horn, Sophie Ristelhueber, Kehinde Wiley, Jeff Wall, James Turell, Lorna Simpson, Tonika Lewis Johnson, Alfredo Jaar, Dawit Petros,, Danh Vo, Guerilla Girls, Tonika Lewis Johnson (The Folded Map Project) and Lucy Orta.
The course structure will provide three tiers of interaction, student to instructor, student to student, and student to content. The class relies on weekly assignment-based projects, peer-to-peer feedback, and self-paced visual material. Historical and contemporary readings and screenings provide a conceptual framework for the course work, which will include weekly reading & screening responses supporting live and online discussions (through Canvas), short visual exercises, a research presentation on a specific artist, and a final project.

Class Number

1665

Credits

3

Description

Transnational Temporalities: Interdisciplinary Research and Practice is a required course for international and AICAD exchange students who are new to SAIC, but have already completed a substantial amount of advanced level or independent coursework. Students enrolled in this class will use utilize both traditional and experimental research methodologies, access the many archives and resources available at SAIC and across Chicago, and participate in a vigorous studio-based critical dialogue about their studio work with a global awareness. The course will encourage students to make connections between this class and their respective areas of studio interest or specialization ¿ through recognition of global identities (otherness and representation, deconstructing difference, decolonization), global contextualization, global art history and it's asymmetries, as well as subject driven themes in global contemporary art: place, time, memory, materiality, body, identity, language, science, among others.
To make engaging art requires the artist to recognize the cultural context of their time, to think critically in regards to that context, and to make art or design works in response. The more an artist or designer seeks to problematize and add greater complexity to what interests them, the more polyvocal their practice will become. Examples of artists and designers to be addressed in this course include: Richard Tufte, Shirin Neshat, Hito Steyerl, Zhang Huan, Mark Lombardi, Tehching Hsieh, Christian Boltanski, Kara Walker, Song Dong, Cai Guo-Qiang, Brian Jungen, Nick Cave, Doris Salcedo, Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Marina Abramovic, Ai Weiwei, Andy Goldsworthy, Roni Horn, Sophie Ristelhueber, Kehinde Wiley, Jeff Wall, James Turell, Lorna Simpson, Tonika Lewis Johnson, Alfredo Jaar, Dawit Petros,, Danh Vo, Guerilla Girls, Tonika Lewis Johnson (The Folded Map Project) and Lucy Orta.
The course structure will provide three tiers of interaction, student to instructor, student to student, and student to content. The class relies on weekly assignment-based projects, peer-to-peer feedback, and self-paced visual material. Historical and contemporary readings and screenings provide a conceptual framework for the course work, which will include weekly reading & screening responses supporting live and online discussions (through Canvas), short visual exercises, a research presentation on a specific artist, and a final project.

Class Number

1492

Credits

3

Description

This course examines the relationships between photography and place, with a focus on post-traumatic sites and their visual representations. We will explore how we perceive and represent space ¿ also, how we read and sense an existing physical place. We will consider the possibilities and limitations of a photosensitive record of a place: a passage from the experience of a place to a visual representation of that experience. Relation between memory, place and time; memory image of a place; tracing the Invisible. Texts, films and videos will focus on specific sites: places of myth and history marked by memory and trauma. Nuclear sites and radioactive landscapes. Camera Atomica: nuclear sublime.Geography of Shoah: concentration camps and post- Holocaust spaces. (Post)memory and hidden presence of the past. Discourse of the Unrepresentable. Based on strong theoretical and visual research, this course emphasizes a research-based art practice. The studio component encourages students to experiment and develop skills in a variety of mediums, resulting in visual and theoretical research presentations, followed by the realization of two independent long-term projects throughout the course of the semester.

Class Number

1536

Credits

3

Description

Capturing Time explores the relationship between cinematic and photographic images through historical, theoretical, and artistic practices. Students will investigate the elusive concept of time and its presence across disciplines, forming the foundation for creating and experiencing time-based art.

Weekly readings, screenings, and research will examine time, temporality, and the boundaries of still and moving images. Historical and contemporary resources will inform studio work, including visual exercises and a final project, culminating in a substantial body of work in each student¿s chosen medium.

Class Number

1532

Credits

3