Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2011, Paperback, 286 pages, 24 × 17cm
Seen as a great artist in Poland, elsewhere Alina Szapocznikow has remained relatively unknown. Today she enjoys the status of a discovery, her sculpture entering museum collections worldwide, an interesting challenge to art historians and curators.
An artist who always put herself in the difficult position of pioneer heading towards the new and unknown, in 1972, near the end of her life, she confessed: "As for me, I produce awkward objects." Here that life and work is addressed by participants in the conference organized by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw: Manuela Ammer, Marta Dziewańska, Jola Gola, Agata Jakubowska, Anke Kempkes, Paweł Leszkowicz, Griselda Pollock, Tomáš Pospiszyl, Anda Rottenberg, Sarah Wilson, and Ernst van Alphen. The photographs of Szapocznikow’s sculptures and visual archival materials construct an important part of the book.