Mikołaj Sobczak
-
Mikołaj Sobczak, Die Spinne, 2026 -
Installation view: House of Nisaba: New Stories of Painting (Group Show), Moderna Museet, Stockholm, May 14 – August 30, 2026Mikołaj Sobczak
Parole, Parole, Parole, 2026Oil, acrylic and collage on canvas
220 x 590 cm
86.6 x 232.3 inches -
Together with a group of friends, I travelled to Capri to research queer resistance during the time of Nazi persecution, when the island functioned as a kind of refuge, almost a mythic sanctuary for queer lives.
– Mikołaj SobczakTo listen to the artist as he speaks about his work, click here.
-
-
-
-
-
In times of political radicalization, Sobczak's art invites us to engage with the construction of history.
– Merle Radtke, Kunsthalle Münster
-
-
News
-
Works
Mikołaj Sobczak
Eva Kotchever, 2024Oil, print on wood, disassembled metal stand250 x 122 x 100 cm
98.4 x 48 x 39.4 inchesB-MSOBCZAK-.24-0025Further images
Recto: During her research into women prisoners in concentration camps, the feminist activist and publisher Suzette Robichon discovered the story of Eva Kotchever. Known by several monikers, of which Eva...Recto: During her research into women prisoners in concentration camps, the feminist activist and publisher Suzette Robichon discovered the story of Eva Kotchever. Known by several monikers, of which Eva Adams is an example, Eva was born in 1891 in Mława into a Polish-Jewish family as Chawa Złoczower.
In 1912, she emigrated from Poland to the United States, where she became involved in the anarchist movement. She also published "Lesbian Love", the first collection in the lesbian pulp fiction genre, having been published three years before "The Well of Loneliness" by Radclyffe Hall in 1925. During the Prohibition, she opened the Eve Adams Tearoom, a popular meeting point for lesbian women. Due to the publication of the book, she was arrested for obscenity and deported to Poland after being purposely seduced by an undercover policewoman. From there she moved to Paris, where she sold books banned in the US.
In 1943, she got involved with Hella Olstein, a Jewish singer from Łódź. Due to a lack of funds, they failed to emigrate from France
in time, were transported to Auschwitz, and murdered. Between the photos Sappho, a famous ancient Greek homoerotic poet, hands over her lira to Eva.
Verso: "Anabaptists walk naked across Dam Square in Amsterdam and are captured" by Jan Lucas van der Beek, 1535.Exhibitions
Mikołaj Sobczak – Teilen und Herrschen, Polnisches Institut Düsseldorf, 2026
Mikołaj Sobczak, Le Boudoir de l'Amour, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2024
Mikołaj Sobczak. Impossible Songs, Jester | Flanders Arts Institute, Genk, 2024.ExhibitionsExternal ExhibitionsPressPublicationsVideoBiographyBorn 1989 in Poznań, Poland
Lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands and Düsseldorf, Germany
Mikołaj Sobczak works in the fields of video and painting; collaborative performative forms of expression are also an essential element of his artistic practice. Sobczak's work depicts everyday scenes as well as alternative historical images; in his surreal, collaged pictorial narratives he inserts protagonists from queer and transgender activism and countercultural emancipatory movements.Sobczak studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in Miroslaw Balka's Studio for Spatial Activities, was a scholarship holder at the Berlin University of the Arts, and graduated as a Masters student in 2019 at the Kunstakademie Münster.Mikołaj Sobczak is currently part of the group exhibition House of Nisaba: New Stories of Painting at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. In June, his solo exhibition Divide and Rule will open at the Polish Institute in Düsseldorf; he will also be featured at Manifesta 16 Ruhr and at FIRE at the St. Nikolai Memorial in Hamburg. His first book, Anti-Fascist Art Manifesto, will be published in the summer of 2026. The artist will present a performance of the same title in July at the NS Documentation Center in Munich.
Mikołaj Sobczak’s recent solo exhibitions include ROZENSTRAAT, Amsterdam; Salzburger Kunstverein; Jester – Flanders Arts Institute, Genk, Belgium; and Kunsthalle Münster. His works have been shown in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Ludwig Forum, Aachen; Shedhalle, Zurich; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; MUDAM, Luxembourg; the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; the Whitechapel Gallery, London; and the Folkwang Museum, Essen. His works are included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; the Ludwig Forum, Aachen; The Perimeter, London; the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; and the National Museum in Gdańsk, among others.
In 2021, Sobczak was awarded the Paszport Polityki, Poland’s most prestigious art prize. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and participated in the Art Explora – Cité internationale des arts residency program in Paris. As one of four selected artists, he has recently been awarded
the Villa Romana Prize for 2026.
Request more information





