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As an actress, Małgorzata Potocka has been associated with the film almost all her life - she played her first film role at early age. However, apart from these activities, carried out as part of commercial cinematography, Potocka is also a visual artist. At the end of the 1970s, together with her husband, Józef Robakowski, she ran an independent art place, the legendary Exchange Gallery in Łódź, at the same time co-creating the environment of the then Polish avant-garde. Potocka used various media: film (her works were made on 16 mm film), she also worked with video - as one of the first artists in Poland. Photography occupied a special place in her work. She created photographic series of self-portraits and photos documenting the world around her. She chose from the reality of the Polish People's Republic what seemed to her the most paradoxical, absurd and unique, and built from reporter's shots ambiguous compositions, arrangements and narratives. The exhibition We don't need other worlds when we have mirrors is the first presentation of her works since 1988. Potocka debuted as a visual artist in 1976 as part of the collective exhibition "Offer" in Lublin. In the following years, her works were shown at exhibitions, incl. in Łódź, Warsaw, Wrocław, Zagreb, Paris, Kassel, Hamburg, Brussels and New York. Małgorzata Potocka's exhibition as part of the Vintage Photo Festival was built on the basis of the artist's photographic self-portraits. The subsequent auto-shots of her face are a special attempt to deal with this subject, as old as the photography itself. It is a special attempt, because it is made by a known and recognized person, who at the same time remains invariably alone with her fears but also observations. Potocka looks at herself carefully and consciously, playing a game with her own image - both public and private. As Jerzy Busza aptly wrote about Potocka, "The only point of reference for any actions of Małgorzata Potocka is herself"
Małgorzata Potocka - actress, director, film producer, visual artist. The author of films, photographs and video works. She grew up in a family closely related to the film, she made her debut in front of the camera as a little girl, but her actual cinematic debut was Andrzej Wajda's film "Everything for Sale", which brought Potocka more roles in Poland and abroad. In 1978, she graduated from the Acting Department, and in 1981 from the Directing Department at the Polish National Film, Television and Theater School in Łódź. In 1985, she received a scholarship from Film Workshop Millenium in NewYork and lectured at several universities in the USA. She belongs to the Polish Filmmakers Association and the Creators of Culture Association. She is the author of photography, experimental films, music videos and TV programs. She exhibited her works, among others in Warsaw, Krakow, Paris, Budapest and New York. Together with Józef Robakowski, she co-founded the legendary Exchange Gallery in Łódź. Currently, she is the general and artistic director of the Powszechny Theater. Jan Kochanowski in Radom.
Marika Kuźmicz - art historian, researcher of Polish and Central European art from the 1960s and 1970s, in particular video and performance art. In 2010, she founded the Arton Foundation, dealing with the compilation of private archives of female and male artists, and in 2017, the Edward Hartwig. Curator of many exhibitions and film programs in Poland and abroad (including TOP Photography Art Museumin Tokyo and Anthology Film Archives in New York), editor of booksand texts on art. From 2018, a lecturer at the Faculty of Visual Culture Management at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, from 2021 the dean of this faculty, and a lecturer at Collegium Civitas. Initiator and coordinator of the international project “Stories not written yet. Archives of on-line female artists ", devoted to discovering the female avant-garde of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the result of which is, among others,www.forgottenheritage.eu repository.