© photo Debbie Stevenson

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 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, which opened in May 2022 at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, travelling to Southampton City Art Gallery and Leeds Art Gallery. 

The grants she has received 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 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. 

Recent Exhibitions and Performances

 

Rewinding Internationalism, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Holland (2022)

Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City (2022-2023)

Spaces and Moments, solo exhibition at Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London  (2020)
Risquons-Tout, (a collaborative work with Lubaina Himid) Wiels Contemporary Art Centre Brussels (2020)
Reduce the Time Spent Holding – Commission of 8 min sound piece for headphones. Plus soundtrack for Lubaina Himid exhibition ‘Work from Underneath’ New Museum, New York, USA (2019)
INVISIBLE NARRATIVES; New Conversations about Time and Place, 
Newlyn Art Gallery, UK (2019)
Tales from Water Margins, 4th International Biennial of Casablanca, Morocco (2018)
The International Print Triennial 2018 – Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków, Poland (2018)
Sounds Like Her, New Art Exchange, Nottingham and UK touring (2017-2019)
TIES, Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium (2017)
Guanlan International Print Biennial in Shenzhen, China (2017, 2015)
10th International Biennial of Contemporary Print at Liege’s Museum of Fine Art, Belgium
Modern Histories vol. III, Bury Museum and Art Gallery, Manchester UK (2015)
International Print Triennial, Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków, Poland (2015)
Project AfterBirth, White Moose, Barnstaple, UK (2015)
Circuit Bridges New York Concert (2015)
Kinokophonography Night at The New York Public Library for Performing Arts (2015, 2014)

Outdoor Public Installations

Her outdoor public installations were shown as part of the TONSPUR programme in MFRU, Foundation Son:DA,
Maribor Old Town Hall, Slovenia (2017)
Kapelica Gallery Ljubljana, Slovenia (2016)
28th Exposition of New Music Brno Festival (2015)
and in MQ21 TONSPUR_passage / Q21 MQ, Vienna (2013)
In 2011 she was commissioned to produce a sound installation in Preston City Centre, UK by In Certain Places (The Arcade).