Aneta Szyłak, curator, educator, writer and art theorist, who founded and ran multiple art institutions in Gdańsk, Poland, has died. Gdańsk, the city closely associated with Lech Wałęsa, the Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who rose to prominence during the labour strikes at the Gdańsk shipyards in the 1970s, remains a very politicised context in Poland and Szyłak, who worked in the city since the 1980s was a prominent figure in Gdańsk’s activist cultural scene.
In 1998, Szyłak founded, with Grzegorz Klaman, the Łaznia (Bathhouse) Centre for Contemporary Art and was its Director until 2001. She then moved on to co-found and be the director of Wyspa Institute of Art between 2004 and 2014. She was also the founder and artistic director of the art festival Alternativa. Szyłak’s curatorial practice was characterised by an interest in the intersections of art, politics and society. Szyłak was also a widely published art critic and won the Jerzy Stajuda Prize for Art Criticism in 2003, recognising her ‘independent and uncompromising curatorial practice’.
