Zuzanna Czebatul (*1986 Miedzyrzecz, PL)

lives and works in Berlin, DE

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By deploying monumental relics, commemorative infrastructures, and architectural interventions, Zuzanna Czebatul examines how political ideology produces an aesthetics of power, and how that aesthetic can be destabilized. Her sculptural vocabulary draws on columns, obelisks, tapestries, archaeological fragments, and other architectural displays that twist or renegotiate the values they traditionally uphold. “Building up to better break down” describes her approach: she remodels the aesthetics of power into a powerful aesthetic charged with transformative potential.

Working with a wide range of materials and tongue-in-cheek formats, Czebatul’s practice moves between the solemn and the playful, the pristine and the abject, the sober and the erotic. Styrofoam sphinxes guard their riddle; inflatable columns insist on their stance; hand-poured concrete masquerades as marble; diabolical carpets invite transgression. These gestures disrupt dominant narratives of persistence, stability, and grandeur by introducing ephemerality, decay, and fluidity–conditions closer to lived experience.

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Born into a family that left post-Soviet Poland in 1991 for newly reunified Germany, Czebatul’s work is shaped by early encounters with ideological rupture and systemic transformation. Experiences of displacement and unstable belonging form the ground from which her practice emerges. Familiarity with political collapse becomes a lens through which she approaches contemporary conditions with heightened critical sensitivity.

Czebatul dissects monumentality and power not as fixed entities, but as social constructs, material agreements sustained through form. She departs from singular sculptural objecthood and instead conceives sculpture as spatial and social environment. Her installations expose and reconfigure the power relations embedded in architectural tropes; her monumental forms soften, collapse, melt, or entangle, renegotiating both material authority and future function.

Rather than transmitting clear-cut messages, Czebatul’s work produces a moment of friction: an irritation that unsettles certainty and reassembles the urgent questions of the present.

Education

2014–2015
Master of Fine Arts, Hunter College, New York
2007–2013
Academy of Fine Arts, Städelschule Frankfurt a. M., with Prof. Willem de Rooij
2012
The Cooper Union, New York
2010–2011
Berlin University of the Arts, with Prof. Josephine Pryde, Berlin

Awards & Nominations

2022–2022
Allegro Art Prize, PL
2021
Preis der Nationalgalerie Berlin, DE (Nominee)
Ars Viva Prize Berlin, DE (Nominee)
Prize of the Erich Hauser Foundation, DE
2019
Ars Viva Prize Berlin, DE (Nominee)
2018
Ars Viva Prize Berlin, DE (Nominee)
2010
Städelschule Rundgang Award Frankfurter Rentenbank e.V., DE
2009
Sculpture Award Grünes Kreuz e.V. Städelmuseum Frankfurt, DE

Teaching

2024–2026
Interim-Professorship HBK Braunschweig, DE
2023
Field School Labor für Kunst und Forschung Universität zu Köln, DE
Tutor at Burg Giebichstein University Halle, DE
2021–2022
Guest Professor at FavU Art Academy Brno, CZ
2019
Tutor at Plato Ostrava Summer Academy, CZ
2016
Tutor at One Fine Day e.V. Nairobi, KEN

Talks & Lectures

2023–2023
Artist Talk Kunstverein Hildesheim, DE
Lecture at Burg Giebichstein University Halle, DE
2021
Artist Talk at Berlinische Galerie, DE
2020
Artist Talk Goethe-Institut Nancy, FR
2019
Lecture at Universität der Künste Berlin, DE

Collections

                  
Bundeskunstsammlung des Bundes Bonn, DE
Kunstsammlung Erlangen, DE
Braunschweiger Family Collection, DE
Jakob Collection, DE
Sammlung Philara, DE
Unionfilm Berlin, DE