Katarzyna Kozyra
In Art Dreams Come True
Performances and films 2003-2006

Nov. 18 2006 – Jan. 6 2007

DAAD Gallery, Berlin

Reviewed by: Rea Cris


During her DAAD Berlin Artist Program, Polish video artist Katarzyna Kozyra, decided on becoming an opera singer, with the help of a professional Polish singer master known as The Maestro and Berlin-based drag queen Gloria Viagra. The exhibition is a documentation of the thirteen performances between 2003 and 2006 as well as a documentary with interviews from people who worked on them.

The performances are metamorphosis of Kozyra transforming into different personalities. Kozyra ranges from becoming a clone of Gloria Viagra, a cheerleader bobbing to the tune of Gwen Stephani’s What you waiting for, a fake Madonna, Snow White and a living figurine in a coucou clock appearing to sing Mozart on the hour. Originally live performances, they translate well into video format.

Kozyra is serious about her art; she is literally ready to kill for it. Her degree piece presented in 1993 at the Department of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw consisted of a life size sculpture of four stuffed animals (horse, dog, cat and rooster) with an accompanying video documenting the horse being killed and skinned. Despite this gruesome and questionably moral act, I feel that Kozyra’s work is a genuine attempt to uncover and discover. Her work is well thought out and worked over. Viewing these videos is like looking through her sketchbook, where she works out different solutions to the questions she has set herself. But the superficiality and deceiving nature of appearances is only scratching the surface of Kozyra’s work. You go away not completely grasping it all and find yourself thinking about it still, days afterwards. For all its spectacle and artifice, the content behind her work is paramount-ly serious.

http://www.katarynakozyra.com.pl/
http://www.themidgetgallery.com/
www.daad-berlin.de/english