ARTIST STATEMENT, NOVEMBER 2025
My practice involves painting, drawing and poetry through live performances in both public and private settings, often in collaboration with artists from other disciplines in the improvising community.
As I explore the evolving nature of painting in the context of the digital and post-human era, I reflect upon our connection with our bodies, other forms of intelligence and life - particularly in our muscle memory, and other sub-conscious sites. I think about the vibrancy of materials and how we interpret and make sense of what we perceive and observe. I am particularly interested in the phenomenon of predetermination, coding and glitches and how they relate to the creative process.
As a performance painter, my works are rooted in research into the physical and metaphorical relationships between sound and drawing. I explore how modalities can be translated as I examine connections between gesture and thought, spontaneity and risk and the tensions between failure, the unfinished and resolution. I’m interested in what gestures and mark-making can capture and reveal about the mind / body connection.
I draw from a range of disciplines, including the Meisner acting technique (which sharpens impulsive, instinctive responses), Contact Improvisation (attuning to balance, gravity and relational movement) and Jungian Active Imagination (a method for engaging the unconscious through symbols and gesture) to incorporate responses that are instinctive, impulsive, choreographed and intentional and to tune me in to my own somatic experience of painting. I reflect upon Internal landscapes, in relation to the external world and the stories related to the places, histories, and the body I inhabit. My interest in the history of gesture in painting includes research into overlooked female artists such as Marietta Tintoretto and others whose legacies offer vital, embodied lineages.
Through abstraction and figuration, I navigate processes that draw from memory, dreams, imagination, impulse, intuition and trace. My performances and processes are often transformative as I explore whether we can escape the confines of our prescribed patterns - whether neurological, physical or habitual.
|
|
| |
___________________________________________
Claire Zakiewicz in Sara Lane Studios, Hoxton
Photographer: Chris Freeman, 2022
___________________________________________
|
_______________________________________________________
Claire Zakiewicz, Sara Lane Studio, Hoxton, 2021
Photo: Chris Freeman
_______________________________________________________ |
CV Highlights
MA (Painting) - Royal College of Art, 2025 - 2026
MA (Fine Art Performance) from London Met, 2010
BA in (Fine Art Printmaking) from ARU Cambridge, 2020
Foundation (Art & Design), Chelsea College of Art, London, 1997
2025
Live Mellifera Performances, Sara Lane Studios, Hoxton
Blue Gallery, New York (April 8 - 27)
Solo show at Aldeburgh Beach Lookout, Suffolk, UK (August 7 - 9)
MA (painting) Royal College of Art, London September 2025 - August 2026
)- supported by the Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award
2024
Creatrix Pod with Habib William Kherbek
Live Mellifera Performances, Sara Lane Studios, Hoxton
Residency at Cyprus College of Art
2023 
Solo show Boudicca's Daughters at Aldeburgh Beach Lookout, UK
2022
Staged solo immersive performance painting at Venice Biennale, "Tintoretto's Daughter"; reviewed by SPAM zine in Kherbek's essay 'Posthuman, all too human'.
Sonic works broadcast on Isotopica for Resonance FM
2021
Group show with Birgitta Hosea & Carali McCall (co-authors of Performance Drawing: New Practices Since 1945) for Some Loose Assemblies, 100 Years Gallery, London
Duo project with Gerald Curtis for Writing the Future, Watermans Art Centre London, (ACE funded)
Duo exhibition with Sophie Seita "There's no way I can know it, the object or the body", HOXTON 253 Art Project Space, London, (funded by Hackney Council)
2020
Published "The Aesthetics of Failure" as part of the volume "The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Music and the Arts: Spontaneity, Flaws and the Unfinished" (Bloomsbury)
2013 - 2020
Lived, worked, performed and exhibited in New York on an O1 Visa; was named in the New York's top 10 artists list in Art511 magazine, 2018
2011
Animation and sonic works presented at Tate Tanks, for the exhibition Tweet me up and projections screened at Tate Britain, in the exhibition Label curated by Tracey Moberly
BIOGRAPHY
Claire Zakiewicz is a British artist currently studying for an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, supported by the Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award. Her practice investigates the physical and metaphorical relationships between sound and painting, exploring how these ideas be applied within contemporary painting and performance. Her essay “The Aesthetics of Failure” was published by Bloomsbury in The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Music and the Arts: Spontaneity, Flaws and the Unfinished (2020).
At the end of 2022, Zakiewicz staged a solo immersive performance painting, Tintoretto’s Daughter, in San Marco, Venice during the closing month of the Venice Biennale.
Born in London, Zakiewicz studied at Chelsea College of Art and Anglia Ruskin University, and earned an MA from Sir John Cass School of Art while exhibiting and performing widely in London and Bergen throughout the 2000s. Between 2009 and 2012, she was a member of the ensemble Fig., alongside composer Alwynne Pritchard and sound artist Thorolf Thuestad, performing in London, Bergen, and New York. Her work was presented at Tate Tanks and Tate Britain in Tweet Me Up (2011) and Label (2012), both curated by Tracey Moberly.
From 2013 to 2020, Zakiewicz was based in New York on an O-1 artist visa. In 2018, she was named one of New York’s top ten artists by Art511 Magazine and participated in several artist residencies, including Mothership NYC, PointB Worklodge, and Bill Young’s Dance Studio in Soho. During her time in the U.S., she exhibited and performed at venues such as The Elizabeth Foundation, NOoSPHERE Arts, Last Frontier NYC, Plaxall Gallery, the Itinerant Performing Arts Festival, and the Satellite Art Show (Miami).
In 2019, Zakiewicz co-founded Creatrix Magazine with Jana Astanov, where she continues to serve as Senior Editor. In 2024, she launched Creatrix Pod, a weekly podcast featuring interviews with female artists, writers, and critics, co-produced with Habib William Kherbek.
Since 2020, Zakiewicz has refocused her practice on the UK art scene, undertaking residencies at Cill Rialaig (Ireland), The Aldeburgh Beach Lookout (Suffolk, England), and the Cyprus School of Art. She exhibited with artist and poet Sophie Seita in the duo show There’s no way I can know it, the object or the body at Hoxton 253 Art Project Space in 2021.
She has collaborated with numerous London-based artists, including Performance Drawing: New Practices Since 1945 co-authors Birgitta Hosea and Carali McCall, and is part of a transdisciplinary improvisation ensemble, Live Mellifera, with Peter Nagle, Emily Suzanne Shapiro, and Petra Haller. In 2022, she performed and exhibited in Field of Action, curated by Ram Samocha, alongside RCA alumnus KV Duong. |
