ARTIST STATEMENT, JUNE 2026
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 era, I reflect upon our connection with our bodies, and the various forms of intelligence and life - particularly in our muscle memory, other sub-conscious sites and in collective forms. I am particularly interested in how painting can reveal forms of knowledge that exist beyond conscious thought and language. I think about the vibrancy of materials and how we interpret and make sense of what we perceive and observe.
As a performance painter, my works are rooted in research into 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 and the things that are irreducibly human.
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.
Through abstraction, dreamscapes and the figural, I navigate processes that draw from memory, imagination, impulse, intuition and trace. My performances and processes are transformative as I explore whether we can escape the confines of our prescribed patterns - whether neurological, physical or habitual.
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Claire Zakiewicz, Royal College of Art MA Painting Show, 2026
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Claire Zakiewicz, Sara Lane Studio, Hoxton, 2021
Photo: Chris Freeman
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projects
CV Highlights
Mres - Royal College of Art, 2026 - 2028
MA (Painting) - Royal College of Art, 2026
MA by project (Fine Art) from London Met, 2010
BA (Fine Art Printmaking) from Cambridge School of Art, 2020
Foundation (Art & Design), Chelsea College of Art, London, 1997
2026
Shortlisted for the 2026 Hyundai Awards for Excellence is Sustainability and Creative Practice
Shortlisted for ArtEvol 2026: A View from Everywhere, Saatchi Gallery, London
Reverse Intake, curated by Rui Lu and Caron Cao, Bloomsbury, London
Apocalypse (And After), curated by Eojin Jo, David Leung, Cecilia Yiqing Mao and Lisa Noack, Hockney Gallery, London
Surfacing, curated by Rua Miles, Sam Wallace and Melanie Cove, Hypha Studios, London
2025
Solo show at Aldeburgh Beach Lookout, Suffolk, UK
MA Painting at RCA full scholarship award ( Ali H. Alkazzi)
2024
Creatrix Pod with Habib William Kherbek
Residency at Cyprus College of Art
2023 
Boudicca's Daughters, solo show 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
There's no way I can know it, the object or the body, HOXTON 253 Art Project Space, London, (funded by Hackney Council), duo exhibition with Sophie Seita
Field of Action, Canning Gallery, London, UK, group show curated by Ram Samocha
2021
Some Loose Assemblies, 100 Years Gallery, London - group show with Birgitta Hosea & Carali McCall (co-authors of Performance Drawing: New Practices Since 1945)
Writing the Future, duo project with Gerald Curtis for, Watermans Art Centre London, (ACE funded)
Itinerant for Performance is Alive, Satellite Art Show, Miami, USA
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
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BIOGRAPHY
Claire Zakiewicz is a British artist who graduated from the MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 2026, supported by the Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award. She is currently undertaking the Master of Research (MRes) at the RCA.
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 internationally throughout the 2000s. 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 artist residencies including Mothership NYC, PointB Worklodge and Bill Young’s Dance Studio in Soho. During her time in the United States, she exhibited and performed at venues including The Elizabeth Foundation, NOoSPHERE Arts, Last Frontier NYC, Plaxall Gallery, the Itinerant Performing Arts Festival and the Satellite Art Show in 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 ten-episode podcast featuring interviews with artists, writers and critics, co-produced with Habib William Kherbek.
Since 2020, Zakiewicz has refocused her practice on the UK and European art scene, undertaking residencies at Cill Rialaig in Ireland, The Aldeburgh Beach Lookout in Suffolk, England, and the Cyprus School of Art. In 2021, she exhibited with artist and poet Sophie Seita in the duo exhibition There’s no way I can know it, the object or the body at Hoxton 253 Art Project Space.
At the end of 2022, Zakiewicz staged the solo immersive performance painting Tintoretto’s Daughter in San Marco, Venice, during the closing month of the Venice Biennale.
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).
Between 2020 and 2025, Zakiewicz collaborated with numerous artists, including Performance Drawing: New Practices Since 1945 co-authors Birgitta Hosea and Carali McCall. She is also a member of the 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.
From 2025 to 2026, Zakiewicz studied for the MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art under Head of Programme Kamini Vellodi and artist and tutor Milena Dragicevic. She is currently undertaking the RCA’s part-time Master of Research programme.
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