New professor for Art and Time | Photography as of 1.10.: Agata Madejska

Agata Madejska works across post-photographic processes, sculptural interventions, sound, and installation. Her work reflects on the articulation of both personal and institutional power, distribution of resources, and the interplay between domestic and state politics.

In her recent projects she examines various ideologies of value and ownership in regard to natural and public resources, housing and infrastructures, the commodification of the female body, and the broader body politic. Informed by her personal history of growing up in and migrating from post-communist
Poland to Germany in 1992, she is interested in moments of political disintegration, alternative economic models, pilot schemes, and all sorts of simulations where success and failure remain equally possible.

Madejska’s work with students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna will centre around the notion of post-photographic landscape as a space for experimentation. It considers photography as an open process that does not seek to produce or reproduce static identities, narratives, or meanings, but instead holds the potential to renegotiate transformative strategies and nurture new relations. Her teaching adopts a speculative approach through which photographic thinking can expand – both conceptually and in practice – into spatial, performative, and time-based forms of expression. The aim is to encourage reflective, curious and exploratory ways of working which evolve into independent, critically engaged artistic positions, that do not shy away from complex, socially relevant issues, inviting both analytical and emotional exploration of diverse realities.

Agata Madejska (*1979, Warsaw) studied photography at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and the Royal College of Art in London, where she has been living and working ever since. Her work was exhibited at Flat Time House, London; Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven; Kunsthaus NRW, Aachen, Tate Modern, London; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Albertinum, Dresden; Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover; Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen and the ICA, London.

Madejska has been the recipient of the Contemporary German Photography award by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation (2008) and the Emerging Artist Award of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (2011). She was awarded grants by Stiftung Kunstfonds (2025), Elephant Trust (2023), Arts Council of England (2023, 2015), the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland (2025) and Kunststiftung NRW (2012, 2009).

Recent publications include Where Should We Turn To in Order to Arrive Where Exactly? (2018); Technocomplex (2017), Form Norm Folly (2014) and Agata Madejska (2013). Her book Mistakes Were Made exploring contemporary political rhetoric in an age of shifting narratives has been published by Edition Taube, Munich in 2024.
Madejska has previously taught at the University of Arts London and at the Folkwang University of the Arts (Essen). She has given guest lectures and artist talks at the Royal College of Art (London), HfBK Dresden, Royal Academy of Arts (London), the Courtauld Institute of Art (London), the Sotheby’s Institute of Art (London), the Institute of Art History at Ruhr University Bochum, and Kordegarda – National Centre for Art (Warsaw).