About Alicja Kwade

Polish artist Alicja Kwade asks herself the fundamental questions that many artists and poets have asked themselves over the centuries about our existence on this rock: ‘We are on a rotating sphere, somewhere in the cosmos. What does that mean?’ The assumptions about time and space that we as humans usually make are just assumptions, she tells us. Does a day have 24 hours? No, we have agreed to divide time that way. And what is time? It exists, we know the signs of its passing, but we do not know what time is. Her essential questions lead to spatial sculptures in which chunks of rock seem to float in rotating steel lines. MatterMotion at ARTZUID is a beautiful example of this. The ancient pieces of stone seem to wander. Questioning the world, that is what it is all about. Searching for answers to the appearance of our planet with us on it, in an infinite space that we can hardly know.