Krzysztof Wodiczko (born 1943, Warsaw, Poland) has been creating site-specific slide and video projections both within galleries and using architectural facades and monuments as backdrops for nearly thirty years. These politically-charged works of art, which have been shown in over a dozen countries around the world, speak to issues of human rights, democracy, violence, alienation, and inhumanity, and using sound and motion often include testimonies of the people whose plights they address. Complementing these projections are Wodiczko’s nomadic instruments, designed to empower marginalized members of society such as immigrants, the homeless, these who lost their closest to street violence and war, women, and children-survivors of domestic abuse, the war veterans and others.
Krzysztof Wodiczko emigrated twice, from Poland to Canada and then from Canada to the United States. He now shares his time between New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a professor a head of Interrogative Design Group, and a director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies and the at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Since 1980, has created over 70 Public Projections of still and video images that critically animate historic monuments and civic edifices. Public Projections with still images include: The Grand Army Plaza Memorial Arch, Brooklyn, NY (1983); The South African Embassy, London (1985); The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. (1988); The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1989),The Lenin Monument, Berlin (1990) and Arco de la Victoria, Madrid (1991). Public Projections involving sound and motion began with City Hall Tower, Krakow (1996) and later engaged the following monumental city symbolic structers: Bunker Hill Monument, Boston (1998); A-Bomb Dome, Hiroshima (1999); El Centro Cultural, Tijuana, Mexico (2001); facade of the National Gallery in Warsaw (2005) and the Kustmuseum Basel, Switzerald (2006). The Hiroshima Projection, was organized after Krzysztof Wodiczko was awarded the Hiroshima Art Prize.
Throughout his career, Mr. Wodiczko has also developed a series of tools and devices for urban interventions, such as Homeless Vehicle (1988-89), Poliscar (1991), as well as portable and wearable communication instrumentations such as Alien Staff (1992), Porte-Parole (1994), AEgis (2000) and Dis-Armor (1999-present). Dis-Armor, which was first developed for the City of Hiroshima, than was on view in the Triennial exhibition at the International Center of Photography and more recently in the exhibition the Interventionists at MASS MoCA.
Mr. Wodiczko’s work has been exhibited in numerous international festival and exhibitions including: Paris Biennale (twice), Biennale of Sao Paulo( twice), The Sydney Biennale, Documenta, Germany (twice); The Kwang-ju Biennale, South Korea; The Venice Biennale (twice); The Biennale in Lyon, France, The Helsinki Biennale, Whitney Biennial, Kyoto Biennale, the Yokohama Triennale and the International Center for Photography Triennial in New York.
