Mikołaj Sobczak
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Biography
Born 1989 in Poznań, Poland
Lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands and Düsseldorf, Germany
Mikołaj Sobczak’s distinctive practice brings together painting, performance, and video to construct alternative histories, centering queer and marginalized figures largely excluded from dominant narratives.
His work will be presented in Family Album at Kunsthuis Syb, The Netherlands (17 October 2026 – 16 January 2027). Sobczak‘s forthcoming and recent exhibitions include Kunsthaus Zürich (opening spring 2027); MANIFESTA 16 Ruhr; Luther Museum, Amsterdam; Polish Institute, Düsseldorf; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; 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.
Sobczak’s works are held in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art; 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 Polityki. He was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, and took part in the residency program with Art Explora - Cité internationale des arts, Paris. As one of four selected artists, he was awarded the Villa Romana Prize in 2026. Turning to writing as another form of expression, Sobczak published his first book this year, Anti-Fascist Art Manifesto (currently sold out).
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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.
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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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Works
Mikołaj Sobczak
Rooms, 2020Performance with Nicholas GrafiaCommissioned for the VII Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2020), Zielona Góra Biennale (2020), Lubuski Theater, PolandFurther images
Ghosts and phantoms are ostensibly able to traverse time and space, cross through impenetrable walls and step into other dimensions. Firmly planted beyond the boundaries of logic and rationality, Nicholas...Ghosts and phantoms are ostensibly able to traverse time and space, cross through impenetrable walls and step into other dimensions. Firmly planted beyond the boundaries of logic and rationality, Nicholas Grafia and Mikołaj Sobczak, have been possessed over and over by various entities who tell intertwined stories of exclusion and injustice. Some of the themes addressed are sweeping in nature, stemming from global history and contemporary political events; or geographically localised around the particular narratives of Filipino myths, or Slavic folk tales. These sources uncover the content boiling in the universal unconsciousness and creating the very foundation of our cultures, based as they are on violence against the other.
Rooms, a thirty-minute scripted performance in which Grafia and Sobczak underline the artificiality and theatricality of their actions, is conceived as the ‘personification of phantoms of past events inhabiting the performers bodies’. In their performance, personal accounts are no longer confined to history but rather seen as an evolving narrative. Conceived with an intentional focus on minority communities, Rooms shows us the great gaps in history – episodes historians might have missed and those that have been purposefully ignored. It also underlines the subjective nature of memory – which is often steered by dreams, irrationality, emotions and ideologies.Exhibitions
Mudam, Luxembourg, October 2021
Zielona Góra Biennale, 2020
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