Weronika Gęsicka
Weronika Gęsicka, Papilio ecclipsis, 2024, from the Encyclopaedia series, detail, phot. courtesy of the artist and Jednostka Gallery
Weronika Gęsicka (b. 1984) is a visual artist who has created photographic works and installations over the past decade that explore and deliberately complicate our understanding of visual histories, evidential knowledge, and collective memories. Photography is the primary medium of her work and practice – serving as the source, context, material, and resolution for her investigations into societal roles, official histories, cultural shifts, and hidden narratives. Gęsicka actively engages with archival materials, including images found serendipitously on the internet, as well as those from stock photo libraries, police archives, and the press. In her most recent project, Encyclopaedia, she has expanded her explorations to include AI tools, enabling her to delve further into realms of the hypothetical and visually uncertain.
She graduated from the Graphics Faculty of the Academy of Fine Arts and completed her studies at the Academy of Photography in Warsaw. Gęsicka is nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026. A winner of Polityka’s Passport (Paszport Polityki) 2019 Award in the Visual arts category (2020), EMOP Arendt Award (2019), Foam Talent (2017), Spotlight Award (2017, Belfast Photo Festival) and LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards (2016). Finalist of Prix HSBC pour la Photographie (2017), Pix Levallois (2016) and the ShowOFF section of the Kraków Photomonth Festival (2016). She received a grant from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in 2008. Her works have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, Internazionale, Spiegel Online, Le Monde and many other magazines.