Alicja Kwade

Alicja Kwade (b. 1979, Katowice, Poland) is a sculptor who lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee. Her practice uses sculpture, installation, and photography to investigate the nature of time, matter, space, and physical laws — gravitational force, light speed, relative motion — treating these as open questions rather than settled facts.

Her works frequently take familiar objects and subject them to processes of transformation, replacement, and doubling that unsettle the apparent stability of the material world. A stone may be replaced by a cast in precious metal; a clock may be stopped or reversed; a mirror placed to multiply and disorient the surrounding space. The resulting installations propose parallel or alternate physical realities without recourse to digital technology. Her large-scale commissions include roof garden installations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (ParaPivot, 2019) and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. She participated in the Venice Biennale (2015, 2019) and documenta 14 (2017). Her work is held by the Hammer Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and institutions across Europe and the Americas.