Panel discussion: 'Entering the Sculpture: Tapta’s Flexible Spaces'

Tapta: Flexible Forms
Online Symposium
Held on 5 October 2024
Panel discussion: Entering the Sculpture: Tapta’s Flexible Spaces
Participants: Sérgio B. Martins, Dirk Snauwaert, Joanna Zielińska
Moderator: Agnieszka Sosnowska
#Tapta (pseudonym of Maria Wierusz-Kowalska, born Maria Irena Boyé) was born in Poland in 1926 and came to Belgium as a political refugee with her husband, Krzysztof Wierusz-Kowalski, after taking part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. She studied weaving at the La Cambre National School of Visual Arts, Brussels, from where she graduated in 1949. Shortly afterwards, the couple moved to the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), where they lived from 1950 to 1960. After returning to Belgium, Tapta swiftly established herself as an important member of a new generation of artists who sought to redefine sculpture by using textiles and other flexible materials as sculptural elements. In doing so, she simultaneously took textile art beyond the categories of the decorative arts and crafts. She had her first solo exhibition in 1966 at the Galerie Les Métiers in Brussels, after which her work was shown in major exhibitions in Belgium and abroad, including at the 4th International Biennale of Tapestry in 1969 in Lausanne. This exhibition, in which her work was displayed alongside those of Magdalena Abakanowicz, Jagoda Buić, Elsi Giauque and Sheila Hicks, encouraged her to continue along the path of unconventional experimentation with textiles.In the 1980s she quite radically changed her materials from woven textiles and cords to neoprene. With this industrially produced rubber she created large black installations that, however, still represent her idea of ‘flexible sculpture’. Tapta died unexpectedly in 1997, just as her native Poland was discovering her work at a major solo exhibition at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, and her monumental sculpture Esprit Ouvert near Brussels North Station had just been inaugurated.
#SérgioB.Martins teaches art history at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and was a Capes-Humboldt Research Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin from 2020 to 2022. He is the author of Constructing an Avant-Garde: Art in Brazil, 1949-1979 (MIT Press, 2013) and Arte negativa para um país negativo: Antonio Dias entre o Brasil e a Europa (Ubu, 2023). He has published nu- merous essays in exhibition catalogues such as Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium (Carnegie Museum, 2017), Cildo Meireles (Reina Sofía, 2013), Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture (Tate Modern, 2015), Anna Maria Maiolino (MoCA, 2017), and Lygia Pape: A Multi- tude of Forms (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2017), as well as articles in journals such as October, ARTMargins, ARS, MODOS, Novos Estudos, Artforum, and Third Text.
#AgnieszkaSosnowska is the curator of the discursive program at Muzeum Susch and assistant professor at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She is interested in art practices at the intersection of disciplines, as well as the exhaustion of the modernist paradigm in the art of the 1960s and 1970s. From 2008 to 2020, she was a curator at Ujazdowski Castle CCA, Warsaw. Selected curatorial work includes three exhibitions at Ujazdowski Castle CCA, Warsaw-Other Dances (2018), Ula Sickle: Free Gestures (2018), and Laura Lima: A Room and a Half (2017)-as well as the exhibition Let’s Dance (Art Stations Foundation, Poznan, 2015) and several performance programs. She is the editor of Other Dances: Performance Turn in Polish Art of Twenty-First Century, among other volumes, and the author of The Art of Disappearance: Theatricality in Postmodern Times (2019) and Resistance Performance (2018), both published in Polish.
#JoannaZielińska is an art historian, writer, and curator specializing in performance. Her curatorial approach is deeply rooted in the concepts of performative exhibitions and artworks. Zielińska's interests span time-based media, performative literature, artist's novel, and the visual arts.
Her current research delves into modern discourses on love through the lenses of feminism and female avant-garde genealogy, animal studies, anthropology, performance art, and literature. Her projects often explore philosophical and sociopolitical themes. Furthermore, Zielińska is keen on sparking discussions about the identity and role of 21st-century museums, focusing on community engagement, the impact of new media, and public discourse over traditional spatial constraints. Currently, she works as a senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (M HKA).
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