KASIA OLEŚKIEWICZ

visual artist & researcher

BIO

Kasia Oleśkiewicz (she/her) (b. 1998) is a Polish visual artist, researcher, art historian and activist.
Her work employs artistic research methodology, merging visual arts with theory. Oleśkiewicz's practice centers on the concept of the "animal"—which she continuously explores, undermines, reclaims, and redefines.
Currently she lives and works internationally, primarily traveling between Bern (CH), Edinburgh (SC), and the Polish west coast.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice takes the form of artistic research: I combine visual arts – mainly drawing, sculpture and painting – with theoretical work, writing, developing concepts and method, collecting exiting cultural texts.
In this research, I focus on issues and forms of the body – its sentience, pain, vulnerability to abuse, violence and control, the inherent position of the body a “given over to another”, as described by Judith Butler.
On this path, I have been guided by the animal.
At the core of my work, there is a deep belief in the urgency of extending our compassion to more than human beings.
In the reality of multiple crises - environmental, political, social, cultural, personal - we see a pressing need to reevaluate our perspectives and priorities. However, such reflections too rarely go beyond human lives. My artistic research seeks to address this gap, examining how protection can be reimagined through the lens of intersectional critical animal studies.
My passion for these theories, which see human and nonhuman issues as interconnected, makes me work with hybrid forms - creating situations in which the binary identification of bodies (as species, race, nationality or gender) is no longer relevant.
I use the term “animal” as referred to all sentient beings. Applying this word solely to nonhuman animals or insults (as its most commonly used) legitimises discrimination.
I reclaim animality as a hyper-positive term. I view it as an inspiration, both on social and personal levels. Through its prism, I imagine alternative cultural models, in which we not only stop harming “others”. Self-identification as an animal allows us to get closer to our own sensitivity, to live in touch with our senses, to shed the taboos surrounding the body and its nature, such as illnesses, ageing, dying.
I see this search for my own animality as an invitation to a more shameless life, untamed from standards, expectations or roles - for example those related to gender.

education

2024/2025 Pre-Doc Programme, Hochschule der Künste, Bern, Switzerland2023-2024 MA Contemporary Arts Practice, Hochschule der Künste, Bern, Switzerland2018 – 2025 MA Sculpture (integrated Master), Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland2019 – 2022 BA History of Art, University of Warsaw, Poland2023 Course "Queer Art and Queer Curating", Node Center, Berlin, Germany2021/2022 Fine Arts (Erasmus programme), Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome, Italy2014-2018 Fine Arts High School, Koszalin, Poland

selected shows & events

2025
• Solo show Manifestos for Regaining Space, St Margaret’s House, Edinburgh, Scotland; supported by: Hugo Burge Foundation, Summerhall, Scot-ART
• Solo show Animal Gaze, Das Kleine Kunsthaus, Bern, Switzerland; supported by: Culture & Animals Foundation, Kanton Bern, Burgergemeinde Bern
• Interview, Tique – publication on contemporary art
[https://tique.art/interviews/artistic-research/kasia-oleskiewicz-manifestos-for-regaining-space/]
• (UPCOMING) Group show, Op Blote Voeten Festival, Landbouwbelang, Maastricht, Netherlands
• (UPCOMING) Solo show, Summerhall, Edinburgh, Scotland (Dec 2025/Feb 2026)2024
• Grant, Culture & Animals Foundation
[https://cultureandanimals.org/grantee/kasia-oleskiewicz/]
• Group show accompanying the anti-fur movie premier of Open Cages Poland, Kinoteka, Warsaw, Poland
• Solo show Broken Beasts, Schalchthof Kulturzentrum, Biel, Switzerland (part of the Scattered, but there festival)
• Artist residency, Hugo Burge Foundation, Marchmont Estate, Scotland
• Artist residency, Houtkust Studios, Houthem St Gerlach, Netherlands
• Presentation, Anthrozoology as International Practice conference, University of Exeter, England (online)2023
• Artist talk, Frei Pass, Bern, Switzerland
• Group show, Achilles and the Turtle, Bern, Switzerland
• Long-durational performance and land art sculpture Digging (collaboration with artists: Cyril Dériaz, Job Griffijn, Nadja Karpinskaya, Emmet Ward), Zehendermätteli, Bern, Swizerland; supported by: Fondation Jetzt Kunst
• Group show/commission DEMOcrazy (collaboration with artists Alessandro Rolandi and Philipp Zürcher), Pakt & IRMA Transdisciplinary Festival, IRMA Republic, Bern, Switzerland; supported by: IRMA Republic, Stadt Bern
• Group show Metafizyka i Plotki, Alina Foundation, Warsaw, Poland2022
• Presentation, Ecocide/Speciesism symposium, organised by PhD Rimona Afana (international, online)
• Group show (online) Existence Resistance organised by Fusion Art Center in Padua as part of the international conference "The Emergence of the Animal in the Contemporary World: Trust and Distrust in Times of Crisis" initiated by the Simon Bolivar Andean University in Quito, Ecuador and the University of Wuppertal, Germany
• Group show Najpierw masa potem rzeźba, Pałac Czapskich, Warsaw, Poland
• Group show Lasciare un segno, Ricognizioni Gallery, Palazzo Chigi, Formello, Italy

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© Copyright Kasia Oleśkiewicz 2025. All rights reserved.