Goshka Macuga - Art of Reframing
Goshka Macuga photographed by Kasia Bobula
Few artists challenge the viewer quite like Goshka Macuga. Her exhibitions don’t offer immediate answers or easy narratives. Instead, they unfold like puzzles, asking you to lean in, read between the lines, and return with new questions. Born in Poland and based in London, Macuga was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2008 and has since established herself as one of the most thought-provoking voices in contemporary art. Her process is deeply intellectual, and the outcomes often demand the same level of engagement from the viewer as Macuga demands from herself.
Her work isn’t for everyone, yet if it speaks to you, it takes you on a thrilling ride of lateral thinking, layered symbolism, and complex meanings. You leave not just visually but intellectually stimulated. Not simply satisfied, but intrigued and compelled to keep digging long after you’ve left the gallery. Macuga’s investigative spirit is surely contagious.
Her exhibitions are often marked by a sense of formal restraint and minimalism, behind which lies a wealth of research, unearthed meanings and contexts. Macuga’s practice consistently draws attention to the political dimension of what we consider aesthetic and visual, opening up a vast field of interpretation.
Fluidly moving between mediums from sculpture, drawing, painting through film and photography to tapestry, Macuga resists categorisation. She refuses to settle into a singular art form and has no interest in mastering just one single technique. Instead, her practice is defined by a sense of constant evolution. Across her projects, she wears many hats: artist, researcher, archivist, institutional detective.
Each of her works unfolds as an in-depth investigation, digging into history, archives, sociology, and culture. Archival research is often her starting point, especially when responding to the historical and social context of the host institution. Frequently given complete freedom by galleries to shape a space, Macuga always delivers the unexpected. Through intelligent incorporation of seemingly disparate objects and narratives, she offers new ways of seeing and understanding, creating fresh contexts and perspectives.
However, as diverse and multi-media as her work is, there’s one thread that remains constant: collaboration. Whether working with historians, choreographers, scientists, or fellow artists, Macuga’s work thrives on exchange. She is known for creating generous platforms for other artists and makers, often incorporating their work, along with pieces borrowed from institutions, into her exhibitions. “I don’t feel the need to claim everything as solely mine. Authorship isn’t that important to me,” she states. It’s the perspective that makes it uniquely Goshka.
Goshka Macuga photographed by Kasia Bobula
Layered Realities
This deep approach to research into historical narratives, contested contexts, and both official and hidden truths, is a recurring obsession in her work. It’s undoubtedly rooted in her upbringing in communist Poland, where propaganda coexisted with multiple, often contradictory, versions of the truth. That early exposure to layered realities sharpened her instinct to always question and investigate.
Born in Warsaw, Macuga moved to London in 1989 to study Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, later completing her MA at Goldsmiths. It was a significant leap moving from behind the cracking Iron Curtain into a completely new, yet what appeared equally chaotic, environment. She arrived in London during a period of deep recession, and graduated during a fragile recovery—an era of significant economical shifts that also affected the art world, reshaping the market and the conditions in which artists created. Those times however bred new models of artistic production.
After graduating in 1996, she became part of a generation of artists who curated their own exhibitions and launched artist-run spaces. Such spaces were made accessible by deflation of the property market. The approach Macuga and fellow artists took was almost theatrical driven by collaboration, improvisation, and a do-it-yourself ethos.
Macuga’s first solo show in 1999 set the tone for her collaborative and curatorial approach: she created a “cave” out of crumpled brown paper, using it as a stage to display works by her artist friends. As Michael Wilson noticed “Cave's structure and style seemed designed primarily to protect and preserve these rare gems, surrendering them to the viewer's gaze with a hint of reluctance.”
As her practice evolved, so did the scope of her installations. She gradually expanded her use of borrowed works to those from museums and institutional collections. For her 2008 exhibition at Tate Britain, Objects in Relation, she combined archival materials and never displayed before artworks from the museum’s holdings like personal letters between artists Paul Nash and Eileen Agar combined with sculptures of her own, as well as rocks and trees sourced from the English woods.
Fashion has long been her creative outlet through styling but she also made her own clothes back in Warsaw. The 90s fashion landscape in London she describes as extremely exciting. “When I was studying at Central Saint Martins, I was friends with Arkadius. I followed his early career closely as he was building his name. (…)That period in fashion was electric—everyone, whether student or artist, was talking about those fashion ideas and concepts. Shows were true spectacles, they were like art performances. The overall execution was sublime, right down to the finest details.” She still treasures pieces from that time. “I have had incredible tailoring from back then—a cashmere coat with silk lining. That was truly next level. You can’t find this kind of quality anymore. Even when you buy designer clothes today—things that are supposed to represent that level of luxury—you can sense the compromise in the quality, it’s really not the same.” she recalls.
She notes how the speed and mode of fashion consumption today affected the quality not only of garments, but also shows and experiences. “Take Galliano’s show for Margiela,” she says. “It wasn’t necessarily better or more groundbreaking than the brilliant work he’s done before. But because overall quality has dropped so dramatically—in fashion and beyond—something simply well-executed suddenly feels extraordinary. It makes people go, ‘Wow.’”
Her own work provokes similar reactions—viewers are often struck by how she brings curatorial thinking into her art practice. Macuga however rejects categorisation and divisions between artistic roles. She cites examples like Duchamp as a reminder that this multidisciplinary spirit is nothing new and her practice is rather a continuation of that lineage, not a revolution.
Speaking of influences, Macuga brings up radical collaborations of the 1960s and ’70s such as Einstein on the Beach, with Philip Glass’s music and Robert Wilson’s choreography, as greatly inspiring. “Those collaborations were incredible,” she says. “I try to create in that spirit and this is what I was trying to achieve in my recent work for Miu Miu," she recalls.
Spring/Summer 2025 show space, courtesy of Miu Miu
Salt Looks Like Sugar
Last autumn, Goshka Macuga’s name landed firmly on the fashion radar. She was invited by Miuccia Prada to design the show space for Miu Miu’s Spring/Summer 2025 presentation, Salt Looks Like Sugar—becoming only the seventh artist entrusted with this role. Though Macuga had previously collaborated with Miuccia through Fondazione Prada, curating numerous exhibitions such as the thrilling “To the Son of Man Who Ate the Scroll” , this marked her first time envisioning a live fashion show.
I asked her how the experience compared to her usual way of working. Was it liberating or limiting? How did the concept take shape? “It wasn’t drastically different from my other artistic projects—I still did what I found interesting, I didn’t have to focus literally on fashion. Of course, it was indirectly related to fashion because I explored the idea of truth and fakeness. Fake news, fashion journalism, media—it’s all so closely tied to that. I looked at themes such as contemporary fakeness, looked at social media as the machine that drives the promotion of style, celebrity culture…” she explained. In a world increasingly shaped by fake news and artificial intelligence, her installation posed a central question: what does it mean to discern reality today?
Typical of Macuga, the project unfolded in layers. Miu Miu press release described it as a “constellation of elements for deciphering the concept of truth and its representation.” It began with the show invitation: two identically shaped cubes—one salt, one sugar—each branded with the Miu Miu logo, subtly hinting at the idea that appearances can deceive. Another layer was the speculative newspaper Truthless Times, culminating in the full-scale printing plant installation that brought the entire concept to life.
The show space was filled with the mechanical sounds of whirring conveyors and rolling printing presses setting the show’s rhythm. Film documenting the production of the newspaper ran in looping strips on overhead screens. Meanwhile, freshly printed spreads of Truthless Times glided overhead on conveyor belts. Copies of the Truthless Times were also placed on each guest’s seat. Headlines like “Archaeologists Digging for Answers Unearth Questions”, “Humanities Leader Says Man Should Follow, Not Lead” or “Famous Philosopher Found in Athletic Attire” offered Macuga’s darkly satirical take on today’s flood of information. Inside, the speculative paper featured not words but QR codes leading to full-length articles by contributors such as Kate Crawford, Elle Rustle, and Shumon Basar - each exploring truth, perception, and power in the digital age.
While Macuga was granted a full creative freedom letting her approach the commission as she would a museum installation, the scale of the project was entirely new. The set featured 43-meter-wide screens—far beyond the dimensions she typically works with. “It was a massive technical undertaking,” she admitted. “Galleries and museums just don’t have the budgets right now to easily do something like this.”
The compressed timeline was also a departure from her usual process. “When I work with museums, I never agree to anything with less than six months of lead time,” she explained. “The way I function I can’t make decisions straight away. I need to study, investigate, and have the opportunity to reconsider things… It was quite a lot of pressure to do this project without that process. ”
Despite minimal direct coordination between artist and designer, Macuga’s vision aligned instinctively with Miuccia Prada’s. “I saw the clothes maybe two days before the show, during rehearsals, I wondered how it will align, but it somehow it worked well together with an interesting contrast. ” she recalled. The result wasn’t linear or overly resolved—and that was precisely the point.
The collection’s lineup explored themes close to what Macuga looked at: displaced meanings, truth in flux. She explored the idea of youth as period of absolute truth. Uniform, youthful silhouettes were reimagined; classic garments subtly manipulated through unobvious layering and impulsive styling choices that felt spontaneous, almost instinctive. “Things becoming other, their displacement changing their purpose, shifting their truth,” read the collection’s press release. Materiality also played with perception: silk disguised as nylon, nylon masquerading as silk… Nothing was quite what it seemed.
courtesy of MiuMiu
Tales & Tellers
If anyone could transform 28 radically different short films into a single, immersive experience, it’s Goshka Macuga. So when Miuccia Prada was asked who should curate Tales & Tellers, her response was immediate: “It has to be Goshka.” Known for her exceptional ability to reframe, remix, and reinterpret existing narratives, Macuga was the natural choice for this ambitious commission.
Presented as part of Art Basel’s 2024 Public Program at the Palais d’Iéna in Paris, Tales & Tellers reimagined Miu Miu Women’s Tales—the house’s decade-long series of female-directed short films exploring femininity and the female gaze. Directors included Janicza Bravo, Zoë Cassavetes, Miranda July, and Małgorzata Szumowska, among others. Each film featured Miu Miu clothing, which became a vessel for building distinctive characters across the diverse narratives. “We may not think of clothes as the most important thing in the world, but when it comes to building identity, they are essential,” Macuga noted. Spanning ten years, the series form a visual archive of shifting perspectives on womanhood showing how stories, struggles, and the politics of being a woman have evolved over time.
To showcase this multitude of voices, realities, and identities, Macuga turned the exhibition into a living, breathing theatrical space. Actors directed by theatre and opera director Fabio Cherstich moved fluidly through the venue, dressed as their characters from the films. They reenacted scenes in a series of vignettes that blurred the boundary between screen and reality.
Tales & Tellers in Paris, courtesy of Miu Miu
Tales & Tellers in Paris, courtesy of Miu Miu
Tales & Tellers in Paris, courtesy of Miu Miu
The result was a dynamic and multilayered experience. Characters from different films entered into dialogue and crossed paths, allowing the stories to converge and resonate with a sense of collective strength. Macuga successfully created a platform for a plurality of voices, weaving them into a unified visual conversation. Her collaborator for this project, Elvira Dyangani, aptly described it as a “project of projects.” The audience was drawn into the experience, not only as spectators but as participants, adding another layer to the storylines.
“It was open for just five days, and 11,000 people came to see it,” Macuga recalls. “That’s a big deal in terms of exposure. And imagine that we were doing something completely new with 105 performers, rehearsed and trained in just three days.” The scale was monumental, the schedule intense, and the outcome so compelling that many wished it could last longer than five days.
That wish materialised just last weekend (9–11 May), when the second iteration of Tales & Tellers took place in New York City, timed to coincide with Frieze Art Week. Expanding on the original presentation in Paris, the project was reimagined for a new city and a different spatial context. This time, the industrial interior of the Terminal Warehouse in Manhattan’s Chelsea district was transformed into a dimly lit, tunnel-like space, evoking the surreal and eerie character of the city’s streets.
Tales & Tellers in NYC, Photo: Daniel Salemi; courtesy of MiuMiu
Tales & Tellers in NYC, Photo: Daniel Salemi; courtesy of MiuMiu
Tales & Tellers in NYC, Photo: Daniel Salemi; courtesy of MiuMiu
Tales & Tellers in NYC, Photo: Daniel Salemi; courtesy of MiuMiu
Reframing, Remaking: Circularity of Materials and Process
While recent years have seen her immersed in complex, multimedia projects, Macuga enjoys the luxurious time of solitary making, where she can let her ideas slowly unfold and take shape. “Exciting, big projects like the one with MiuMiu often come with immense pressure, So when quiet, alone days in the studio happen—I really enjoy it. It’s my place of safety, my refuge.”
When we speak on FaceTime, she is working on a series of paintings for her solo exhibition currently open at Vistamare Milano, titled Desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. There, Macuga explores the tension between distraction and renewal, viewed through both environmental and human lenses. "It reflects my thoughts on the ecological crisis, but also on entropy—the idea that everything eventually moves toward destruction," she explains. "I've been working almost like an archaeologist: excavating, breaking down, and rebuilding. I like the idea that the process doesn’t have to be linear. It can be repeated, circular."
This idea of the loop—reframing, repurposing, and revisiting—not only informs the conceptual aspects of her work, but extends to the very materials she employs. Fascinated with the unknown, she reaches for new material solutions bridging art and science “In terms of materials, I’ve been experimenting with alternatives. I went down a whole research path trying to replace resins with mycelium.”
The fungus, she explains, has the potential to grow into robust, sculptural forms, suitable for furniture or even architecture, but it comes with limitations. “The scale is tricky. The texture, the colour are unpredictable. In the end, for that show, I had to fall back on conventional methods, which was frustrating. They’re not great for the environment, and I know that.” She mindfully continues “If the work finds a home—if people value it, keep it, pass it on—you feel somewhat justified in making it. But for sure, we should be producing less, especially the things we don’t need.”
This tension between creation and reduction, permanence and impermanence is not a new reflection for her. She recalls a project from her career’s beginnings she did at Cubitt, the artist-run gallery in London, where she reclaimed works other artists had discarded. “It was around ’97 or ’98. I was invited to create something in the space for 24 hours only, so I built an installation entirely from rejected pieces. At first, their creators were happy to get rid of them. But once they saw them reframed, they suddenly wanted them back. That was fascinating.”
Macuga has always been drawn to diverse disciplines. Asked if there’s another profession she has ever longed to pursue she says “I’ve always had a passion for dance—whether modern or classical. So if I could choose again, I’d become a choreographer or a dancer… But even then” she adds with a smile, “I’d probably still find myself mingling with other fields, with musicians, theatre directors… I'd try to break down barriers and stay open.”
Follow Goshka’s Instagram for updates on her projects and collaborations.