born in Warsaw in 1994. She come from a family of food lovers and filmmakers, an only child, the daughter of a mathematician. She grew up with mother and grandparents in Warsaw's Ochota district with great enthusiasm for independence.
At the age of 15, she started her first job selling vegetables at a stall near the church, worked as a clerk in the tax office, then in many well-known Warsaw restaurants. At the same time, graduated from school and tried to pursue her creative passions at work. She photographed cooks and food, drew portraits of employees in the back room.
In the years 2016 - 2019 studied at the Faculty of Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
In 2019, she was strongly inspired by the Bauhaus, mainly the work of Oskar Schlemmer. Zuza defended bachelor's degree titled "Transformation" inspired by the costumes designed for the Triadic Ballet. The promoter of the diploma was Dr. Lukasz Kosela.
In 2021, she was looking for a topic for her diploma related to her city. She wanted to focus on flat surface and try to create a space from traditional art technique. She focus on a group of living people, tell a story, and get her out of her comfort zone. She didn't want to create a narrative of an unknown situation. For her, Warsaw is the city of the myth of success, but also the cradle of sex work in Poland. For her, sex workers have always been part of the landscape of the city, main topic of neighborhood legends and Warsaw chants. That's why she decided to get a job in one of Warsaw's go-go clubs as a waitress. She spent days at college, nights in a nightclub, with a notebook and a pack of crayons. That time allowed her to do a research, meet sex workers and witness a lot of stories. Sex workers became the subject of her master's thesis.
In 2022, Zuza graduated from the Faculty of Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. The promoter of the master's thesis "Unshame" was prof. Leon Tarasewicz. The promoter of the annex to the diploma "Object" was prof. Tomasz Myjak, and the promoter of the theoretical work “Sex-working. The dilemma of the industry on the border of law, acceptance and satisfaction” Dr. Katarzyna Kasia. After graduation, she continued the project.
In September 2022, in cooperation with the Art as Freedom foundation, she organized an individual exhibition dedicated to history of sex work, which was an excuse to consider the subject moral and aesthetic discourses.
All information about artist's current projects and works, you can find on personal site:
www.zuzabedkowska.com
