Monika Szewczyk

Curator | The Polygon Gallery; Co-curator | Documenta 14

Monika Szewczyk is Audain Chief Curator at The Polygon Gallery since 2023. Born in Szczecin, Poland, Szewczyk [pron. shef-chick] moved at a formative age to the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations also known as Vancouver, Canada. Her lifelong interest in art- and/as history-making has evolved in close collaboration with artists, poets, activists, and archivists whose methods vary, but who all tend to reimagine structures and reinvent traditions as they negotiate belonging to more than one place, people and culture. After gaining early experience at The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and Vancouver Art Gallery she was Head of Publications at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam (now Kunstinstituut Melly) (2008-2011); Visual Arts Programme Curator at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago (2012-2014); one of the curators for documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens (where she was based), and Director of de Appel Art Center in Amsterdam (2019-2022). Throughout she continued to lecture, advise and lead seminars at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, Bergen Academy of Art and Design, the University of Chicago and as the 2022/2023 Quis Research Fellow at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule and Goethe Universität in Frankfurt.