Mikołaj Sobczak
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Biography
Born 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.From June to October 2026, Sobczak will participate at Manifesta 16 Ruhr.Mikołaj Sobczak’s recent exhibitions include ROZENSTRAAT, Amsterdam; Salzburger Kunstverein; Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle; Jester - Flanders Arts Institute, Genk, Belgium; Ludwig Forum, Aachen; Kunsthalle Münster; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; MUDAM, Luxembourg and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw. His works are held in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-West- falen, Düsseldorf; Ludwig Forum, Aachen; The Perimeter, London; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw and The National Museum, Gdańsk, among others.
In 2021, Sobczak was awarded Poland’s most prestigious art prize, the Paszport Polityk. He was an artist-in- residence at the Rijksakadmie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and took part in the biannual residency program with Art Explora - Cité internationale des arts in Paris. As one of four selected artists, he was recently awarded the prestigious Villa Romana Prize for the year 2026.
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In times of political radicalization, Sobczak's art invites us to engage with the construction of history.
– Merle Radtke, Kunsthalle Münster
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News
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Mikołaj Sobczak
'Anti-Fascist Art Manifesto' (Performance), Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism
July 7, 2026, 7 PM 7 July 2026Artist Mikołaj Sobczak will give a performance of his essayistic work Anti-Fascist Art Manifesto, which will also be presented as a newly published book. Sobczak's...Read more -
Mikołaj Sobczak
'Manifesta 16 Ruhr' (Biennial), Ruhr Area
June 21 – October 4, 2026 21 June 2026From June 21–October 4, 2026, the nomadic biennial spans four Ruhr cities–Bochum, Essen, Duisburg, and Gelsenkirchen–across 12 decommissioned modernist churches. Sobczak presents a newly commissioned...Read more -
Mikołaj Sobczak
'Mikołaj Sobczak', Polnisches Institut Düsseldorf
June 12 – October 9, 2026 12 June 2026The Polish Institute in Düsseldorf presents the first institutional solo exhibition of Mikołaj Sobczak in Düsseldorf. The exhibition brings together key works from different creative...Read more -
Sanya Kantarovsky, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Mikołaj Sobczak
'House of Nisaba: New Stories of Painting' (Group Show), Moderna Museet, Stockholm
May 14 – August 30, 2026 14 May 2026“House of Nisaba: New Stories of Painting” signals a return to figurative painting in contemporary art, through the lens of allegory. The exhibition highlights 29...Read more -
Mikołaj Sobczak
'IN THE MEANTIME. Villa Romana Fellows 2026' (Group Show), Villa Romana, Florence
March 12 – May 29, 2026 12 March 2026“In the meantime' names an interval: a time between events, between crisis and possibility, between gesture and act. The phrase also carries another echo: that...Read more -
Mikołaj Sobczak
Villa Romana Prize 2026 12 June 2025In a year that marks 120 years since the founding of Villa Romana, we are delighted to announce the recipients of the Villa Romana Prize...Read more
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WorksOpen a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Installation view. Impossible Songs, Jester, Genk, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Jester. Ph: Van den Bussche-Vanden Bossche.
Mikołaj Sobczak
Lulla la Polaca, 2024Oil, print on wood, disassembled metal stand250 x 122 x 100 cm
98.4 x 48 x 39.4 inches
B-MSOBCZAK-.24-0030Further images
Recto: Lulla La Polaca is the oldest drag queen in Poland. Born Andrzej Szwan in 1938 in Warsaw into a family of Jewish origin, he was rescued from the ghetto...Recto: Lulla La Polaca is the oldest drag queen in Poland. Born Andrzej Szwan in 1938 in Warsaw into a family of Jewish origin, he was rescued from the ghetto and witnessed the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.
He was an active member of the Warsaw gay community at the time of the Polish People’s Republic, remaining an activist for the rights of non-heteronormative people and the queer community in Poland to this day. He made his debut on stage in 2012 thanks to Kim Lee, a Polish drag queen of Vietnamese origin here depicted together with Lulla on the night of her debut. The other photographs show cross-dressing parties in which Lulla would wear “a red dress made of a flag”, as she jokingly recalled it.
Verso: Title Page to "The Discription of the severall sorts of Anabaptists" by William Marshall, British, active ca. 1617–1650.Exhibitions
Mikołaj Sobczak, Le Boudoir de l'Amour, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2024
"Mikolaj Sobczak. Le Boudoir de L'Amour", Capitain Petzel, 2024.
"Mikolaj Sobczak. Impossible Songs", Jester | Flanders Arts Institute, Genk, 2024.Exhibitions-
25 for 2025
11 January — 15 February 2025Explore -
Mikołaj Sobczak
Le Boudoir de l'Amour 11 September — 19 October 2024Opening: 11 September, 2:30 - 8 pm Capitain Petzel is pleased to announce Mikołaj Sobczak’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, opening as part of Berlin Art Week on September...Explore -
omelette papier
15 January — 5 March 2022Karla Black, Andrea Bowers, Joe Bradley, Isabella Ducrot, Jadé Fadojutimi, Hadi Fallahpisheh, Anna Gaskell, Georgia Gardner Gray, Stefanie Heinze, Charline von Heyl, Sanya Kantarovsky, Maria Lassnig, Marcel Odenbach, Pieter Schoolwerth,...Explore -
On the Politics of Delicacy
24 January — 22 February 2020The Robert Anton Theatre & Yael Bartana, Duggie Fields, Federico García Lorca, Nicholas Grafia, Hannah Höch, Karolina Jablonska, Krzysztof Jung, Tadeusz Kantor, Stanislava Kovalcikova, Zoe Leonard, Liliane Lijn, Raúl Martínez,...Explore
External ExhibitionsMikołaj Sobczak, Prophet Machine, 2025
ROZENSTRAAT- rose is a rose is a rose, Amsterdam
Press-
Most Magazine: "Rhyme to Reason: What I Learned from Auguring Art in Salzburg" (Mikołaj Sobczak)
17 September 2025 -
Spike: "Mikołaj Sobczak at Salzburger Kunstverein"
Annalise June Kamegawa, 16 July 2025 -
Vogue Polska: "Vogue Polska” x BMW Art Academy: Contemporary artists are inspired by folklore" (Mikołaj Sobczak)
Marta Czyz, 28 May 2025 -
CULTURE.PL: "‘Familiar Strangers’: A Powerful Exhibition about Eastern Europe at Bozar, Brussels"
Aleksander Kmak, 16 April 2025 -
Artline: "Mikołaj Sobczak: Leibeigene. History in Drag"
Jens Bülskämper, 15 December 2022 -
Frieze: "Mikołaj Sobczak Upends History Painting"
Krzysztof Kościuczuk, 18 November 2022 -
Zacheta: "Demining fear. Mikołaj Sobczak in conversation with Aleksander Kmak"
Mikołaj Sobczak, Aleksander Kmak, 1 August 2021
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