Alicja Kwade

BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1979 in Katowice, Poland, Alicja Kwade lives and works in Berlin, where she studied at the Berlin University of the Arts. She has participated in several biennials, including in Istanbul (2007), Mumbai (2016), and Venice (2017). Her public art works have been presented internationally, notably as part of the Roof Garden Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2019) and the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris (2018). Several museums have acquired her work, including the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Public art

Place d’Armes

Against the Run, 2022, installation

This work of art reveals itself only when someone stops to look at the time and, puzzled, observes the face turning counter-clockwise, as though trying to escape the ineluctable forward progress. And yet, despite the counterintuitive movement making it nearly impossible to read, the clock always shows the right time. With Against the Run, Kwade undermines human conventions that regulate our relationship with time and the arbitrary systems that assign meaning to the world and impose order on a chaotic universe.

Manif d’art and the artist would like to thank KÖNIG GALERIE Berlin | London | Seoul | Vienna.

Discover the artist

Alicja Kwade
Pologne, Berlin.