Performance: Marta Ziółek PERSONA

6 March 2026, 6.30 pm

Marta Ziółek

PERSONA

this is an object

this object is a letter

this object is skin

this object is muscle

this object is bone

this object is performance

this object is choreography

this is an object that speaks, thinks and moves

this object is marta ziółek

this object is not marta ziółek

this object is ewa partum –

this object is not ewa partum

this object is a mask and simulation

PERSONA is a performance in which Marta Ziółek channels the presence and absence of Ewa Partum through her own body – her traces and archival remnants. ‘Persona’ (from Latin) means a theatrical mask or stage character; in Roman theatre, ‘persona’ referred to a mask with an opening for the mouth (‘per sonare’  – for the sound to come through).

Here, the mouth is the entrance to the body, while also being a vessel for performative statements, the physical side of vocal production, a series of resonant and relational surfaces. Ziółek moves affectively between different types of performances and incarnations. The viewer is invited to a theatre of the mouth, where the performer moves between a lecture, a performative lesson and a concert.

Ewa Partum is one of the most important Polish artists of conceptual and feminist art. In her work, she has consistently used her own body as a medium, revealing the tensions between the intimate and the public and exposing invisible structures of power.

Through oral body gestures and choreographed movements, Ziółek does not reconstruct Partum’s actions, but rather sets her practice in somatic resonance. The body becomes a vibrating letter, an object, a mask other people's voices and one's own cracks pass through. Speech resounds and resonates from within, between what is inside and what is outside.

This is a personal experience. Between us at this moment there is also our past, which we carry within ourselves as an intimate space.

(Ewa Partum, Pioruette, 1984)

Choreography, performance, text: Marta Ziółek

Music: Zoi Michailova