Almost Everything

A retrospective of Aneta Grzeszykowska at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art: works from eleven photographic series spanning twenty years, videos and the sculpture “Franciszka 2025” from the Centre’s own collection. The hang works in layers rather than in date order. On view 10 October 2026 to 7 February 2027, with the opening on Friday 9 October at 19:00. Curated by Ewa Gorządek.

Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art on the exhibition:

In her work Aneta Grzeszykowska takes up existential themes, examines the phenomenon of identity and tracks the ambivalences of the human image.

The artist is interested in the performative dimension of photography and in the potential of the medium to allow images to be manipulated and creatively travestied. She removes figures from photographs, questions her own identity, and unceremoniously appropriates the works of other women artists for her own purposes.

Grzeszykowska’s primary creative material is her own body, through which she explores the complex spectrum of identity. What counts for her on the conceptual level is equally the experience and the emotions she draws from her own life. She usually works in series, which allows her to rework the various aspects of the problems and phenomena she takes up. Alongside her photographs, Grzeszykowska’s best-known works include the doll-sculptures she has been sewing since 2007 as self-portraits or as imagined likenesses of her daughter in the future.

The exhibition is retrospective in character. It will present works from eleven photographic series produced between 2006 and 2026, as well as videos and the sculpture Franciszka 2025 from the Ujazdowski Castle Collection. The thematic coherence that runs through Grzeszykowska’s practice allows combining photographs from different series achronologically. Out of this singular palimpsest emerges a story of the progressive deconstruction of one’s own identity, mounting existential anxiety and inevitable passing, a gradual slide into nothingness. Happily, the artist frequently counters the gravity of her subject matter with humorous touches, and her works are wrapped in an aura of the uncanny.

What to expect

Photographs, videos and one sculpture. The museum announces works from eleven series made between 2006 and 2026, films, and “Franciszka 2025” from the Centre’s own collection. Ewa Gorządek is the curator, Julia Lipiec the coordinator; both names come from the exhibition’s colophon.

The central curatorial decision is stated openly: the photographs are not hung in chronological order. The museum explains this by the coherence of the work itself, which lets series made fifteen years apart sit side by side. In practice you will not get a timeline of a career. You get one thread pulled through two decades: the artist’s own body as raw material, and identity as something that can be taken apart.

What the museum does not give: the number of works, the number of rooms, or the names of the individual series. “Franciszka 2025” is the only title it mentions. No catalogue has been announced either.

This is not the artist’s first appearance at this address. Her work was shown here back in 2007, in the exhibition “Betonowe dziedzictwo” (Concrete Heritage). This time she gets the full sweep.

Context

Aneta Grzeszykowska was born in Warsaw in 1974 and graduated from the Graphic Arts department of the Academy of Fine Arts there in 1999. Until 2005 she worked mainly as a duo with Jan Smaga; their best-known project, “Plany” (Plans), photographed private flats from above and assembled each one on a computer out of dozens of frames.

Her solo work circles around identity, absence and disappearance. In “Album” she erased her own figure from more than two hundred pictures in her family archive, producing a photographic autobiography with no protagonist. In the films “Black” and “Headache” the material is her own body. Since 2007 she has been sewing the doll-sculptures that serve as self-portraits or as imagined future likenesses of her daughter.

She won a Polityka Passport, the annual award of the Polish weekly Polityka, for 2013. In December 2025 she took the Wojtek Falęcki Award for her show “Karma” at Raster, the Warsaw gallery she has worked with since the start of her career. She has shown at the Venice Biennale (2022) and the Yokohama Triennale (2024), and her photographs are held by the Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. She teaches performative photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the Academy of Art in Szczecin.

Tickets and time

• Exhibition tickets: 30 PLN regular, 20 PLN reduced (also for Large Family Card holders), 45 PLN family for two adults and two children under 18, each further child 5 PLN. Children and students up to 26 pay 5 PLN with a valid student ID; children under 7 and Warsaw Pass holders enter free.
• There is no separate ticket for this show. The museum runs one price list for its exhibitions, with no surcharge for a particular one.
• Thursday is free and the museum states that free Thursday admission covers all exhibitions, so it covers this one. It is the only free day here.
• Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday 11:00-19:00 (11 AM - 7 PM), Thursday until 20:00 (8 PM). Closed on Mondays. Last visitors are admitted 30 minutes before closing.
• Booking: the museum mentions neither advance booking nor timed entry slots for its exhibitions. Tickets are sold online at bilety.u-jazdowski.pl and at the ticket desk in the main hall.
• How long: allow 60-90 minutes if you look properly. That is our estimate, not the museum’s; nobody has published a works count.
• Visitor card: 100 PLN, valid for a year, good for two free exhibition entries a day. It pays for itself after four solo visits or two visits for a couple, so it is for residents rather than visitors.
• Groups of 10 to 25 people are booked by e-mail: with a guide at edukacja@u-jazdowski.pl, without one at info@u-jazdowski.pl.
• The cloakroom is temporarily closed (museum information, as of 18 September 2026). The show runs through the winter, so plan for carrying your coat.
• Access: the west entrance is at ground level, the courtyard has ramps at a 10 percent gradient, and from there you take stairs with handrails or a lift. There is an accessible toilet on level +1 and two disabled parking bays in front of the building.
• What else is on the same ticket: the exhibitions CSW is showing now all close before this one opens. On 24 October 2026 the Castle opens two more, “HAEM” by Anna Baumgart and “Can Red Be Trusted” by Róża Litwa, so from that date one ticket covers three exhibitions.
• English on site: the museum publishes the full exhibition page in English but does not say whether the wall texts in the galleries are bilingual. It announces no audio guide and no English-language tours for this show. A guided tour in English can be arranged for a group through the education address above.
• Getting there: Jazdów 2, on the escarpment beside Łazienki Park. Buses 116, 180 and 195 from the Nowy Świat area and bus 188 straight from Chopin Airport stop at Plac Na Rozdrożu, five minutes’ walk away.

Who it is for: anyone who follows Polish photography and contemporary art, and more broadly anyone who keeps an eye on the region. If you know “Album” or the doll-sculptures only from reproductions, this is worth a dedicated trip across town rather than a stop on the way to somewhere else.

Who should skip it: families with small children. The artist works with her own body, the museum itself promises existential anxiety and an aura of the uncanny, and it sets no age guidance. If you come on a Thursday, expect company: it is the only free day.

Events

• 09.10.2026, 19:00 - opening at Ujazdowski Castle. The museum warns that the opening will be photographed and filmed. It does not state admission terms or whether registration is needed.

Beyond the opening, the museum has not yet announced curator-led tours or talks around this exhibition.

What the press says

As of 18 September 2026 there are no reviews. The show has not opened. The only text beyond the museum’s own page is an announcement, in Polish:

• Fotopolis.pl (11.09.2026, the Fotopolis editors): the photography site sums the show up as eleven series from twenty years and reprints the museum’s description. It adds one thing the museum’s page does not say: that admission to the opening is free - announcement

See also

• VALIE EXPORT. Die Doppelgängerin - at the Museum of Modern Art until 16 March 2027; the Austrian pioneer of body art, the closest thing Warsaw offers on the same subject at the same time.
• Transformations. Old and New Photography - at the Asia and Pacific Museum until 24 January 2027: 80 photographs in 40 thematic pairs, photography as document rather than as staging.
• 17th Photography Cabinet: Józef Czechowicz - at the National Museum until 13 December 2026, for anyone who wants to follow Grzeszykowska with photography from the age when a portrait was still a craft.
• The sculpture park around Ujazdowski Castle - open and free whether or not you buy an exhibition ticket, and worth ten minutes before you go in or after you come out.

Museum profile: Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art.