Mikołaj Sobczak, The Memory of the Origins of Painting, 2023

Born 1989 in Poznań, Poland

Lives and works in 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.

Recent exhibitions include Salzburger Kunstverein (2025), Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle (2025); Jester - Flanders Arts Institute, Genk, Belgium (2024); Ludwig Forum, Aachen (2023); Kunsthalle Münster (2022-2023); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2021); MUDAM, Luxembourg (2021) and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2020). Works by Sobczak and Nicholas Grafia were purchased by the Stiftung Junge Kunst of the Friends of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen as part of the 2019 graduate exhibition of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Sobczak's works are held in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 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 (2021-2023) and from September 2023 until February 2024 Sobczak was participating 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.