Andrzej Karmasz, visual artist, was born in 1976 in Gdansk, Poland, where he lives and works till present day. Karmasz studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Gdansk, graduating in 2003.

Crucial to Karmasz’s artistic identity is his participation in a Monbukagakusho Scholarship, giving him an opportunity to study in Japan in 2004 -06, as well as his travels to South-East Asia and China. His artistic projects tell stories of transformational processes and interfusions of different cultures. At the start of his artistic process, he closely studies local cultures, customs and daily routines of his subjects.
Karmasz most often takes on the role of a woman. Using tools of masquerade and metamorphosis, the artist poses the question of gender identity and ways of blearing the boundaries between the sexes. Using a tool of a sexual camouflage in an artistic process is often inspired by the myth of Androgyne- a non-binary gender identity. Though Karmasz’s images are of a clearly narcissistic character, the importance of experiencing one’s own identity seen in diverse ways and performed differently in various roles strikes the beholder the most.

His most famous project, “Hybrids”, is a series of photographic self-portraits, where he continuously transforms his own image. We see him as a Geisha (2005); performing the role of Yang Kuei Fei in a Beijing opera (2005), or as a Nigerian woman from Fulani (2005). Karmasz himself becomes a subject of the possibilities and limitations of cultural assimilation. In his transformations, the artist transgresses both the cultural and gender boundaries. The accumulation of various images, roles posed by different cultures causes the unmasked man to be The Other, somebody from the outside, one that does no longer fit in.

For the “Identifications” exhibition we selected three self-portraits form the “Hybrids” project (2005-07). The Signum Foundation holds the entire project in its collection.

The exhibition is a part of an international and interdisciplinary conference “To belong to a minority, to be a minority” organised by the Lodz University (2nd-4th of March, 2016).

Curator Grzegorz Musiał

Signum Foundation Gallery, Ul. Piotrkowska 85, Łódź