Ewa Bobrowska

Visual art · Philosophy · Video installation

Ewa Bobrowska brings contemporary philosophy into the space of an artwork. A visual artist, philosopher and art theorist, she explores how images, language and memory shape the ways we understand the world.

Her paintings, video art and installations create a dialogue between artistic practice and philosophical thought. Questions of fear, compassion, identity and the relationship between the visible and the spoken become material for an encounter with the viewer.

Art and philosophy in a shared space of memory, image and thought.

Archives of Fear

Archives of Fear (Collective Memory)

An installation in two parts: Archive 1 — Body Memory and Archive 2 — Cartouche II. Bobrowska takes Jacques Derrida’s concept of the archive into the visual and conceptual realm, asking how individual and collective memory retain experiences that have been repressed or excluded.

Body Memory addresses the suffering and fear of immigrants, inviting compassion and solidarity with the other. In Cartouche II, escape, enclosure and intimacy become metaphors of human existence. The work brings the truth of the image into contact with philosophical reflection.

Views from the artist’s supplied documentation of the video installation.

Archives of Fear — Collective MemoryEwa Bobrowska

Archives of Fear — installation viewEwa Bobrowska

The Truth in Painting

Derridean Hypostasis of Spirit (Inscribed in a Circle)

In this video-projection work, Bobrowska draws on Derrida’s The Truth in Painting. The circle, the frame and the cartouche become ways of exploring the reciprocal relationship between art and the philosophical discourse around it.

A circle of flames connects the work to Heraclitus and to Hegel’s dialectical life of spirit. The installations also explore the oppositions between visual and verbal expression, reality and spirit, life and death, beauty and the sublime.

Kierkegaard’s reflections on subjectivity and existential dialectics inform another part of the work. Together, these projections ask how art and philosophy can illuminate one another.

Selected images from the artist’s documentation of the project.

The Truth in Painting — CartoucheEwa Bobrowska

Derridean Hypostasis of Spirit — circular compositionEwa Bobrowska

Biography & research

Bobrowska’s background joins visual arts and contemporary philosophy. She holds doctorates in Contemporary Philosophy from the University of Warsaw and in Fine Arts from the University of Arts in Poznań. Her teaching has included media arts, philosophy and the Art of the Public Domain studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, in collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko.

Her research concerns contemporary American and French critical theory, aesthetics, ethics and the mutual influence of art and philosophy. Her work engages with thinkers including Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean-Luc Nancy, Richard Rorty and Emmanuel Levinas.

Selected exhibitions

Her paintings, video art and installations have accompanied philosophical conferences, including Derrida Today at the University of California, Irvine (2012), and Fordham University, New York (2014). Her exhibition history also includes the Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, and Lamentum 66 at Trafostacja Sztuki, Szczecin (2018).

Selected books

UCI Critical Theory and Contemporary Art Practice: Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Bruce Nauman, and Others — Peter Lang, 2020.
California Critical Theory. Anthology of Texts: Derrida, Lyotard, Hillis Miller — editor-in-chief and main translator, 2019.
Parateoria. Kalifornijska szkoła z Irvine — 2013.