Magda Stawarska’s multi-disciplinary practice combines moving image, soundscape and, importantly, traditionally made silkscreen prints and paintings on paper. In a series of projects, she has examined how rhythms in sound affect our ability to decode the visual, how the process of inner listening and intimate listening to a soundscape of place, impacts on the ability to understand one’s personal relationship to a city and how the trauma of loss, passed from one generation to another translates to the structure, the architecture and absent buildings within a city.
In 2020 Magda Stawarska-Beavan was shortlisted and shared in the Award for Artists from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Her past grants include: Artists’ International Development Fund – British Council and Arts Council England – Grants for the Arts for her Istanbul Sound Impressions and Kraków to Venice in 12h projects. In 2015 she won the Hamelin Polska Award at the International Print Triennial – Kraków. Her printmaking works are in collections in the Printmaking Museum in Shenzhen, China and the Kraków International Print Triennial Collection, Kraków, Poland.
In 2020 Bracka 40 which debuted in her solo exhibition at Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix in London was purchased by Arts Council Art Collection and exhibited again as part of Right About Now exhibition, the most extensive display of Arts Council Collection acquisitions to date. Right About Now highlighted a diverse selection of 18 contemporary British art. Bracka 40 is part of the Arts Council touring exhibition Found Cities, Lost Objects; Women in the City opening in May 2022 at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, travelling to Southampton City Art Gallery and Leeds Art Gallery.
In 2021 Magda made significant contributions to the Lubaina Himid exhibition and catalogue at Tate Modern by creating five sonic environments within the architecture of the museum spaces.
She is continuing to work collaboratively with Lubaina Himid on sound installation and printmaking. In 2022 she was commissioned by Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven to compose an 8-channel sound installation in response to Lubaina Himid’s series of paintings titled Zanzibar from 1998. This was part of ‘Rewinding Internationalism’, an exhibition and research project.