Born in Poland, Macuga is a London-based artist associated with a generation of artists who combine the roles of archivist, curator, and scenographer. Macuga has worked in a variety of media over the last decade, from collages and photographs to tapestries and site-specific installations. Many of the artist’s projects begin with sustained research in the libraries of her sponsoring institution and result in works that recover and reframe forgotten or controversial moments from her host’s past. Some of Macuga’s projects concern historical acts of censorship; others the competing claims made on art by artists, governments, and the public.
Macuga was a finalist for the 2008 Turner Prize, and her work has been featured in dozens of group exhibitions, including the 2009 Venice Biennale, the Berlin Biennial, the Liverpool Biennial, the São Paolo Biennial, and Documenta 13, among others. Solo exhibitions and commissions have been held at the Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Britain, the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, the Kunsthalle Basel, the Walker Art Center, and Andrew Kreps Gallery. Her first retrospective is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Macuga studied at the Wojciech Gerson School of art, Central Saint Martin’s School of Art, and Goldsmiths College.
Macuga is the Princeton University Art Museum’s third Sarah Lee Elson, Class of 1984, International Artist-in-Residence; previous honorees include Thomas Hirschhorn in 2012, and Emre Hüner in 2011.
