lives and works in Berlin, DE
Download CVBy deploying monumental relics, commemorative infrastructures, and architectural
interventions, Zuzanna Czebatul examines how political ideology produces an aesthetics
of power, and how that aesthetic can be destabilized. Her sculptural vocabulary draws on
columns, obelisks, tapestries, archaeological fragments, and other architectural displays
that twist or renegotiate the values they traditionally uphold. “Building up to better break
down” describes her approach: she remodels the aesthetics of power into a powerful
aesthetic charged with transformative potential.
Working with a wide range of self-produced materials and tongue-in-cheek formats,
Czebatul’s practice moves between the solemn and the playful, the pristine and the
abject, the sober and the erotic. Styrofoam sphinxes guard their riddle; inflatable
columns insist on their stance; hand-poured concrete masquerades as marble; diabolical
carpets invite transgression. These gestures disrupt dominant narratives of persistence,
stability, and grandeur by introducing ephemerality, decay, and fluidity–conditions closer
to lived experience.
Born into a family that left post-Soviet Poland in 1991 for newly reunified Germany,
Czebatul’s work is shaped by early encounters with ideological rupture and systemic
transformation. Experiences of displacement and unstable belonging form the ground
from which her practice emerges. Familiarity with political collapse becomes a lens
through which she approaches contemporary conditions with heightened critical
sensitivity.
Czebatul dissects monumentality and power not as fixed entities, but as social constructs,
material agreements sustained through form. She departs from singular sculptural
objecthood and instead conceives sculpture as spatial and social environment. Her
installations expose and reconfigure the power relations embedded in architectural
tropes; her monumental forms soften, collapse, melt, or entangle, renegotiating both
material authority and future function.
Rather than transmitting clear-cut messages, Czebatul’s work produces a moment of
friction: an irritation that unsettles certainty and reassembles the urgent questions of the
present.
EDUCATION
- 2014–2015
- MFA Hunter College, New York
- 2007–2013
- MeisterschülerIn, Städelschule, Prof. Willem de Rooij, Frankfurt a. M.
- 2012
- Cooper Union, New York
- 2010–2011
- Universität der Künste Prof. Josephine Pryde, Berlin
AWARDS & NOMINATIONS
- 2022
- Allegro Art Prize (PL)
- 2021
- Preis der Nationalgalerie Berlin (DE) (Nominee)
- Ars Viva Prize Berlin (DE) (Nominee)
- Prize of the Erich Hauser Foundation (DE)
- 2019
- Ars Viva Prize Berlin (DE) (Nominee)
- 2018
- Ars Viva Prize Berlin (DE) (Nominee)
- 2010
- Städelschule Rundgang Award Frankfurter Rentenbank e.V. (DE)
- 2009
- Sculpture Award Grünes Kreuz e.V. Städelmuseum Frankfurt (DE)
TEACHING
- 2024–2025
- Interim-Professorship HBK Braunschweig (DE)
- 2023
- Field School Labor für Kunst und Forschung Universität zu Köln (DE)
- Tutor at Burg Giebichstein University Halle (DE)
- 2021–2022
- Guest Professor at FavU Art Academy Brno (CZ)
- 2019
- Tutor at Plato Ostrava Summer Academy (CZ)
- 2016
- Tutor at One Fine Day e.V. Nairobi (KEN)
TALKS & LECTURES
- 2023
- Artist Talk Kunstverein Hildesheim (DE)
- Lecture at Burg Giebichstein University Halle (DE)
- 2021
- Artist Talk at Berlinische Galerie (DE)
- 2020
- Artist Talk Goethe-Institut Nancy (FR)
- 2019
- Lecture at Universität der Künste Berlin (DE)