Listening Session: Magda Stawarska

Magda Stawarska’s installations, paintings and silkscreens are informed by her signature practice of ‘inner listening.’ In this specially conceived listening session for Mudam, Stawarska invites visitors into the heart of her two-person exhibition with Lubaina Himid at Mudam, before venturing outward to explore the perimeters and peripheries of the fort that houses Mudam’s campus. Through an active process of walking, listening and dreaming, participants are invited to consider how the practice of listening and looking affects the way we look and feel about the world around us.

The title of the event is gleaned from Gertrude Stein’s novel, Ida (1941) and specifically the first third of the novel, invoking Ida’s capacious curiosity – her desire for travel and movement, but also for rest.

Biography

Born in Poland in 1976, Magda Stawarska’s multi-disciplinary practice combines moving image, sound, silkscreen prints and painting. Her work often arches around her distinct practice of ‘inner listening’, through which she explores the connections between personal memory, place and sound, uncovering hidden and conflicting histories. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Artist-to-Artist, Frieze, London; Drift, Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London; Plaited Time / Deep Water, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE; A Fine Toothed Comb, HOME, Manchester; Rewinding Internationalism, Villa Arson, Nice, and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Her work is in public collections including the Government Art Collection, London, the Arts Council Collection, London and the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection. She is a Research Fellow for Artlab Contemporary Print Studios at the University of Central Lancashire and lives and works in the UK.