Krzysztof wodiczko biography of abraham

Polish artist (born 1943)

Krzysztof Wodiczko (born April 16, 1943) is a Polish artist known for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. He has realized more than 80 such public projections in Australia, Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.

War, conflict, trauma, memory, and communication in the public sphere are some of the major themes of his work. His practice, known as Interrogative Design, combines art and technology as a critical design practice in order to highlight marginal social communities and add legitimacy to cultural issues that are often given little design attention.

He lives and works in New York City and teaches in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is currently professor in residence of art and the public domain for the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). Wodiczko was formerly director of the Interrogative Design Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was a professor in the Visual Arts Program since 1991. He also teaches as visiting professor in the Psychology Department at the Warsaw School of Social Psychology.

Early life

Wodiczko, son of Polish orchestra conductor Bohdan Wodiczko, as well having a Jewish mother, was born in 1943 during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and grew up in post-war communist Poland. In 1967 while still a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, he began collaborating with director Jozef Patkowski and the Experimental Studio on sound performances. He graduated in 1968 with an M.F.A. degree in industrial design and worked for the next two years at UNITRA, Warsaw, designing popular electronic pr

Wodiczko, Krzysztof. "Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Project 2012". More Art in the Public Eye, edited by Micaela Martegani, Jeff Kasper and Emma Drew, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2019, pp. 108-123. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781733099325-012

Wodiczko, K. (2019). Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Project 2012. In M. Martegani, J. Kasper & E. Drew (Ed.), More Art in the Public Eye (pp. 108-123). New York, USA: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781733099325-012

Wodiczko, K. 2019. Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Project 2012. In: Martegani, M., Kasper, J. and Drew, E. ed. More Art in the Public Eye. New York, USA: Duke University Press, pp. 108-123. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781733099325-012

Wodiczko, Krzysztof. "Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Project 2012" In More Art in the Public Eye edited by Micaela Martegani, Jeff Kasper and Emma Drew, 108-123. New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781733099325-012

Wodiczko K. Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Project 2012. In: Martegani M, Kasper J, Drew E (ed.) More Art in the Public Eye. New York, USA: Duke University Press; 2019. p.108-123. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781733099325-012

Copied to clipboard

A Monument Man Gives Memorials New Stories to Tell
Using video projections, the artist Krzysztof Wodiczko reclaims public spaces for marginalized viewpoints.
by Hilarie M. Sheets

As published in the New York Times on January 23, 2020

Long before monuments were generating debates, protests and headlines over what and who should be commemorated, the Polish-born conceptual artist Krzysztof Wodiczko was broadening the scope of what memorials around the world could be, taking them well beyond their makers’ intentions.

Since the 1980s, he has been projecting videos onto historical statuary and structures, making monuments into megaphones for the powerless in society. War veterans, Hiroshima survivors, the grieving mothers of murdered children, abused female laborers — all have proclaimed their personal stories from these pedestals.

“Monuments can be useful for the living,” said Mr. Wodiczko, 76, at his studio in the East Village, the New York neighborhood he has called home since 1983. (Mr. Wodiczko, who is married to the painter Ewa Harabasz, commutes each week to Cambridge, Mass., where he has taught for the last decade at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.) “Sometimes it’s safer and easier for people to tell the truth in public,” he mused.

Two socially and politically charged public projections are currently bringing new life to monuments in Manhattan. After dusk each evening in Madison Square Park, continuing through May 10, the faces and hands of 12 resettled refugees animate the 1881 bronze statue honoring Adm. David Glasgow Farragut, a Civil War hero, which was designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The refugees, in a looping projection by Mr. Wodiczko, recount their harrowing journeys to the United States from their war-torn countries, including Syria, Guatemala and Mozambique.

“People don’t really know what it means to be stateless and to flee,” one participant from Burma said in a recent phone interview. (Like the other refugees

Galerie Lelong and More Art are pleased to announce a major new public art installation by Krzysztof Wodiczko: Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection. Beginning November 8th, 2012, voices of recent veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will animate the bronze commemorative statue of Abraham Lincoln that has stood silently in Union Square since 1870. For ten days, the memories and feelings of American soldiers will speak through Lincoln as part of an outdoor public art installation by Krzysztof Wodiczko, an artist renowned for his large-scale light projections on architectural facades and monuments.
Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection marks a return of sorts to Union Square for the artist, who in 1986 developed Homeless Projection: A Proposal for Union Square, a project that was tested in Union Square and presented in a gallery space. The proposal projected still images of objects associated with homelessness onto the four monumental sculptures in Union Square, addressing the effects of real estate development on the once derelict area in the 1980s. In the new work, veterans will animate the statue of Abraham Lincoln with motion and sound in the now commercially-thriving and historically civic center of Union Square.
“As our troops withdraw from Afghanistan, this commemorative statue, commissioned just a few years after the Civil War, again becomes a place for dialogue about war,” says Micaela Martegani, founding director of More Art. More Art, an eight-year-old organization devoted to bringing new and innovative works of art into public spaces in New York City, is the organizer of Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection.
For the project, Wodiczko is interviewing approximately thirty veterans and their family members over the course of several months, taping conversations about their war experiences and the toll of duty on their family life. It will be these points of view, presented in each person’s own words, voice, and gestures, that will be