Marta Michalowska

Marta Michalowska is an artist, writer, editor and producer working across London, UK, and the Ardèche, France. Her practice, spanning photography, film, installation and text, is in dialogue with places, especially those with complex and contested past and/or present.

Her recent hybrid piece, weaving diary, poetry, prose and images, titled notes from/on/beyond a border was published by Strings in the very first volume of a new online literary magazine in March 2024. Marta’s writing has been previously published in Migrant Journal and Litro, as well as in collections Interior Realms, Concrete and Ink: Storytelling and the Future of Architecture, and A Love Affair. She has recently completed her debut novel – A Photograph is not a Story –  supported by the Arts Council of England through the Developing Your Creative Practice programme, and is working on her second – Drowning. She is also working on a book-length essay Edgewater, weaving together diaries, travel writing, nature writing, art criticism, memoir, archival materials and photography to create a layered portrait of the Bug River, flowing between Poland, Belarus and Ukraine – the last major unregulated river in Europe and a questionable line of division between the West and the East – once an unintended nature reserve, now a militarised fault line.

Her works in photography and moving image have been exhibited at Kronenboden (Berlin), The Wapping Project (London), Miedzy Nami (Warsaw), RIBA Gallery (Liverpool), and AOP Gallery (London). In 2023, she was selected to participated the Hessen Lab at B3 Festival of Moving Image (Frankfurt am Main). In 2024, her works from the series  East /i:st/ noun were included in the exhibition The Active Image: Political Ecologies & Photographic Agency presented by The Sustainable Darkroom in partnership with the Folk House Darkroom at Create Bristol. 

She has held readings, screenings and presentations of her work at The Raft Festival, Horse Hospital (London), New Generations Festival (Rome), Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre (Outer Hebrides, Scotland), California College of Art (San Francisco), Whitechapel Gallery (London), and Jerwood Space (London). 

Michalowska is a graduate of London College of Communication (BA Photography), Central Saint Martins (MRes Art: Moving Image), and City, University of London, (Novel Studio). Alongside her creative practice, she runs The Wapping Project, a London-based yet nomadic arts organisation producing new works across film, installation, photography, performance and literature. Until the end of 2022, she was Co-Director of Theatrum Mundi, a London- and Paris-based centre for research and experimentation in the public culture of cities.