Zuzanna Czebatul

By deploying monumental relics, commemorative infrastructures, and architectural interventions, Zuzanna Czebatul examines how political ideology produces an aesthetics of power, and how that aesthetic can be destabilized. Her sculptural vocabulary draws on columns, obelisks, tapestries, archaeological fragments, and other architectural displays that twist or renegotiate the values they traditionally uphold. “Building up to better break down” describes her approach: she remodels the aesthetics of power into a powerful aesthetic charged with transformative potential.

Working with a wide range of materials and tongue-in-cheek formats, Czebatul’s practice moves between the solemn and the playful, the pristine and the abject, the sober and the erotic. Styrofoam sphinxes guard their riddle; inflatable columns insist on their stance; hand-poured concrete masquerades as marble; diabolical carpets invite transgression. These gestures disrupt dominant narratives of persistence, stability, and grandeur by introducing ephemerality, decay, and fluidity–conditions closer to lived experience.

Born into a family that left post-Soviet Poland in 1991 for newly reunified Germany, Czebatul’s work is shaped by early encounters with ideological rupture and systemic transformation. Experiences of displacement and unstable belonging form the ground from which her practice emerges. Familiarity with political collapse becomes a lens through which she approaches contemporary conditions with heightened critical sensitivity.

Czebatul dissects monumentality and power not as fixed entities, but as social constructs, material agreements sustained through form. She departs from singular sculptural objecthood and instead conceives sculpture as spatial and social environment. Her installations expose and reconfigure the power relations embedded in architectural tropes; her monumental forms soften, collapse, melt, or entangle, renegotiating both material authority and future function.

Rather than transmitting clear-cut messages, Czebatul’s work produces a moment of friction: an irritation that unsettles certainty and reassembles the urgent questions of the present.

2014 - 2015 MFA Hunter College, New York
2007 - 2013 MeisterschülerIn, Städelschule, Prof. Willem de Rooij, Frankfurt/M.
2012 Cooper Union, New York
2010 - 2011 Universität der Künste Prof. Josephine Pryde, Berlin

Solo Exhibitions (Selection)

2026 Nothing Vast Without a Curse at sans titre Paris, FR
Crash at Import/Export Warsaw, PL
The Alignment – Inauguration Art in Architecture Stockholm, SE
2025 All the Charm of a Rotting Gum at Dittrich&Schlechtriem Gallery Berlin, DE
2023 The Lunatic Fringe at sans titre Gallery Paris, FR
Vortex Reloaded at Kunsthal Thy, DK
Planet X at Rosa Stern Space Munich, DE
2022 Der Blick at Erich Hauser Foundation Rottweil, DE
Baustelle at Import/Export Gallery Warsaw, PL
Monument Error at EXILE Gallery Vienna, AT
The Joy of being the Cause at M1 Arthur-Boskamp-Stiftung Hohenlockstedt, DE
A Vacant Quarter at FKA SIX Ringbahncenter Berlin, DE
2021 Happy Deppy Ecstasy Institute at Kunstpalais Erlangen, DE
The Cell at EXILE Gallery Vienna, AT
2020 Dazed Squatting at Owned by Others Berlin, DE
The Singing Dunes at CAC Synagogue de Delme, FR
Hell Hath No Wrath like a Dick Scorned at sans titre Gallery Paris, FR
2019 Salt at Limbo Berlin, DE
T–Kollaps at GGM1 Municipal Gallery Danzig, PL
Whacko In & Loco Out at IG Metall Haus Berlin, DE

Art in Architecture
2026
The Networkers, invited competition, Fraunhofer Institute, St. Augustin (Winner – inauguration August 2026)
2025 Invited competition, Art in Architecture, community school “Im Gartenfeld”, Spandau (ongoing)
Invited competition, Fraunhofer Institute, St. Augustin (ongoing)
Covivio Alexanderplatz, Art in Architecture development (ongoing)
Venice Biennale, Polish Pavilion (proposal)
Open competition, grave design for Berlin LGBTQ+ community, Berlin (proposal)
2024 The Alignment, invited municipal competition, Stockholm (Winner – unveiling April 2026)
Invited competition, district office Spandau, Berlin (2nd prize)
Open competition, Art Commission Düsseldorf (2nd prize)
2023 Andrea I, Berghain/Panoramabar Berlin (realized)
Die Schmelze, Los Angeles, Günsterode (realized)
2021 Open municipal competition, fountain design, Chemnitz (proposal)