Selfportrait as Mäda Primavesi – Homage to Gustav Klimt. On display @ Fußballmuseum Dortmund Germany
Maria Kossak is a Berlin based multimedia and performance artist of Polish descent. She was born behind the iron curtain, into a family of artists and writers. Due to the oppressive political climate and her family’s subsequent emigration she found herself in West Berlin during the late Cold War period. Throughout the 1980s the divided city of Berlin became her childhood playground. Life in Berlin shaped not only her personal but also her artistic identity. Following family inclination, Kossak studied visual and performance art and graduated from the city’s Academy of Fine Arts (UdK) with special honors.
She revises the iconographical usage of plated gold and adds to it a powerful metaphor of collective and personal longing, characterised by a scheme of colours that range in shade between earthy/morbid and pallets that shimmer with a translucent light. This chromatic scheme effects a subversive blurring of the usual boundaries that demarcate fixed styles, genres and time periods. They suggest a restless movement of moods and materials that is characteristic of Kossak’s creative impulse.
selected press articles
20 JARHRE EXBERLINER
“wings of desire” excerpt – Der Himmel über Berlin
Exberliner: celebratory issue, published in summer 2022, Berlin/ Germany
“… »She holds the world but as the world, – A stage where every angel plays their part…«,
Berlin 128 – Magazine
Interview excerpt – Kultur im Dienste des Staates
Text: Monika Stefanek, published in spring 2016, Berlin/ Germany
“… »Nationalistische Rhetorik weckt natürlich Erinnerungen an die dunklen Zeiten in Europa«, sagt Maria Kossak.
KULTURTIEGEL
Maria Kossak, Neuköllns Goldfinger
Text: Marek Staszyc, published autumn 2015, Lodz/Poland – Link zum Artikel
POLITYKA
Polen-Berlin-Witkacy
POLITYKA
Polen-Berlin-Witkacy
Text: Anna Tyszecka Erschienen im Sommer 2015, Warschau/Polen
Link zum vollständigen Artikel
POLITYKA
Doppelidentitäten
POLITYKA
Doppelidentitäten
Text: Anna Tyszecka Erschienen im Sommer 2014, Warschau/Polen
Link zum vollständigen Artikel
recent performance photos
J.W. Goethe: “to the sun” multimedia projection, Berlin/ Germany
The World a Stage
“I hold the world but as the world, – A stage …”
Shakespearean stage performance: Maria Kossak, winter 2018, Berlin/ Germany
“I hold the world but as the world, – A stage where every man must play a part…” William Shakespeare
Source of Creativity
symbolic coordination of left- and right brain hemisphere
Synchronisation performance: Maria Kossak, summer 2018, Berlin/ Germany
“… »The hemispheres of the brain can be seen to represent the dualistic reality in which we live- «, says Maria Kossak.
The black bride
Performance at opening night of a show dedicated to women’s rights infringements
I will never be #MariaMagdalena: Maria Kossak, spring 2018, Cracow, Poland
