Chinese European Art Center

Artist in Residence | Wiola Ujazdowska | The Modern Melancholia

Meet @wiola.ujazdowska, a visual artist and PhD candidate currently dividing her time between Włocławek, Poland, and Egilsstaðir, Iceland. Working across visual art, academic research, and cultural organizing, she explores themes of history, social structures, and the human condition. Her work has been presented internationally at venues including the National Gallery of Iceland, the Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń, the OSTRALE Biennale in Dresden, Nýlistasafnið in Reykjavík, and Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

During her residency at the Chinese European Art Center (CEAC), she will focus on developing her ongoing art project, Melancholia. The project re-examines the historical concept of melancholia—once understood as a medical condition and human temperament—as a lens to address modern existence amidst simultaneous global crises, drawing on the philosophical writings of Slavoj Žižek, Mark Fisher, Timothy Morton, and Peter Wessel Zapffe.

Throughout the residency, she aims to create a series of ceramic works using Blanc de Chine, a traditional porcelain from Dehua, China. These works respond to Zapffe’s 1933 essay The Last Messiah, translating its themes of existential pessimism and the unique burden of human consciousness into material form.

Scroll through to get a closer look at her work and stay tuned for what’s coming next!

(The residency was carried out as part of a scholarship awarded by the Minister of
Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland/ Zrealizowano w ramach
stypendium Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego.

The residency is also supported by Muggur traveling fund and the Icelandic Art Center. ）
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cover page by @terry_xiee