Karolina Grzywnowicz. Desensitization

Zachęta — National Gallery of Art

curator: Katarzyna Kołodziej-Podsiadło

In the latest works presented at the exhibition, Karolina Grzywnowicz takes up the topic of the political dimension of the senses — she looks at how power can affect the body: our sensory experience of reality, but also the basic physiological processes. It shows how influencing the senses can lead to pain, confusion, anxiety, exhaustion, as well as subordination. At the same time, he discovers grassroots forms of opposition and seeks new tools of resistance.

The artist focuses her attention on the regions of humanitarian crisis: the Polish-Belarusian border and Palestine. The borders between states — especially in the face of modern conflicts — are places where the mechanisms of necropolitics are clearly revealed. They are systemic tools and practices by which power decides whose lives are protected and whose lives can be exposed to death. In this sense, migration policy ceases to be a system of protection and becomes a dehumanizing, oppressive system of exclusion. This is facilitated by disinformation, militarized infrastructure, as well as the natural environment of the Białowieża Forest, which for refugees can become a trap with no way out.

The exhibition's video works, objects and installations — including fragrance — treat the senses as a political field that can be shaped, disturbed and subjugated. Of particular importance in this context is the sense of smell, around which the new project Desensitization focuses. The artist focuses on the olfactory dimension of the border experience in the Białowieża Forest — experienced by refugees and those who help them. Grzywnowicz works with smell not only as a sign of presence or testimony of violence, but above all as a potential healing tool. The traps show how the natural environment of the Białowieża Forest becomes part of the border enforcement mechanism. The starting point for the video installation was the research of biologists who, with the help of photo traps, documented the impact of border infrastructure on local ecosystems, especially animal migrations. On the sidelines of the scientific project, evidence was created — an unplanned, grassroots archive of life and violence at the border.

Combat Breathing (2025) addresses the question of survival in conditions of oppression, starting from the experience of the effects of tear gas on the body. Breathing — the most basic of physiological activities — also becomes a political act here. Grzywnowicz is interested in the experience of people who have lived for years in conditions of occupation and the ways in which they try to protect themselves and their communities. In Bedtime (2021), the artist refers to the experience of sleep deprivation — the deprivation of the opportunity to rest and sleep peacefully — used in Palestinian refugee camps. In response to this reality, the artist recorded lullabies sung to children there, which acquire a special meaning in conditions of permanent siege. They are a form of care, but also a carrier of memory and continuity of culture. These are the voices of Palestinians who are consistently trying to take away their right to life.

Grzywnowicz reflects on the phenomenon of weaponization of the senses, that is, the use of perception and bodily experience as tools of control. At the same time, it shows how it can be recovered above individual and community feeling.

Karolina Grzywnowicz (born 1984) is a visual artist working at the intersection of art, research and activism. Her practice is based on collaboration with professionals from different fields and local communities and people with refugee experience — to create spaces for interaction and knowledge exchange. He creates situations and interventions using installation, sculpture and film.

Her works have been presented at the Akademie der Künste der Welt (Cologne, Germany), Hellerau — Europäisches Zentrum der Künste (Dresden, Germany), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Zachęta — National Gallery of Art (Warsaw) and The Indian Museum in Kolkata (India). In 2024, she was a fellow of the CEC ArtsLink program in New York and Chicago, where she realized a solo exhibition at Watershed Art & Ecology in Chicago. She has held residencies at Schloss Solitude Academy (Stuttgart, Germany), CCA Ujazdowski (Warsaw, Poland), Ramallah (Palestine), Pondicherry (India) and Tokyo Art and Space (Japan). In 2022, she received the Warsaw Gallery Weekend Special Award for the project Distillate. She is also a recipient of scholarships from the Berlin Senate and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for 2025. She graduated in Comparative Literature, lives and works in Berlin and Warsaw.