Mar* Szydlowska

During the opening of A Womb of Things to Be and a Tomb of Things That Were , Mar* Szydłowska presents a performance developed in dialogue with the exhibition.

Mar* Szydłowska is an artist, choreographer and performer living and working in Brussels. Their artistic research explores the politics of perception, working across opacity, peripheral phenomena and the invisible affects that emerge within architectural and institutional spaces. Moving between performance, installation and film, their practice investigates how attention distributes and moves between bodies, environments and images. Their works operate like a shifting lens, oscillating between blur and focus, the abstract and the concrete, proximity and distance, orientation and disorientation. Through gesture, haptics and duration, they create performative situations where affect and ephemerality become perceptible, exploring how bodies relate to and transform the spaces they inhabit.

Mar*'s practice grew from an early engagement with museums as a tour guide and cinematographer, developing an attention to the peripheral and invisible layers of institutional spaces. Their debut solo work SOAK was presented at Beursschouwburg, followed by LEAKS, presented during Generation Brussels / Brussels Gallery Weekend and at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. They have also created performative guided tours in relation to exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Komplot in Brussels and IKOB – Museum of Contemporary Art in Eupen, and have presented at Tanzquartier Wien and KANAL–Centre Pompidou among others.

Mar* Szydłowska, photo: Valeriia Scherbina
Mar* Szydłowska, photo: Valeriia Scherbina
Mar* Szydłowska x Abigail Aleksander, SKINFOLD (2026), Beursschouwburg Brussels, photo: Valeriia Scherbina