Wodiczko is internationally renowned for his over 70 large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments realized since 1980 in Australia, Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, projections from which the artist challenges his viewers to draw social and political conclusions.

He has also developed a series of public nomadic instruments for both homeless and immigrant operators that function, not without a touch of irony, as implements for survival, communication, empowerment, and healing, like his prototype for a portable one-person home called Homeless Vehicle (1988-89).

In 1977 Wodiczko emigrated to Toronto, Canada, where in 1980 he began developing his ideas for slide projections in urban space. Since 1983 he has lived in New York, where he has continued developing his series of “public intervention” instruments. Currently Wodiczko shares his time between New York and Cambridge, Mass., where he is Director of A.C.T., the Center of Art, Culture, and Technology at M.I.T. and head of its Interrogative Design Group. Represented by Galerie Lelong, Krzysztof Wodiczko has exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including major Biennales (see resume).

ART: The artistic practice of Wodiczko, in a radical yet at the same time utopian way, undertakes social problematic of 1920s Polish constructivism - using primarily the ideas of Wladyslaw Strzeminski - with reference to particular threads in mythology and religion, and applying them to "public art". Since the 1970’s Wlodiczko has been realizing works in which ideas of justice are present: the artist speaks up for the harmed and unaccepted (“the others”), among them those suffering from HIV, and those rejected (mostly immigrants) in a context of racist views hidden under the facade of the so-called liberal society. Wodiczko’s art is also often related to that of artists like Hans Hacke and Zbigniew Libera, who strip away the myths of the post-modern state and reveal its hidden mechanisms.

In 1987 Wodiczko entered into collaboration with writer David Lurie, which resulted in Homeless Vehicle, tested over the next two years in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In 1991 Wodiczko tested a prototype Poliscar. In 1992 he worked on the project Allien Staff - the work which referred to Christian iconography and the notion of a religious myth (among others, to Moses’ walking-stick), but was applied in the context of immigrants ("strangers") in the West’s consumer societies. From 1994 to 1997 Wodiczko was director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T., where he worked with his students on subsequent realizations like Porte-Parole, 1994. As head of Interrogative Design Group at the Center (since 1997) he worked on the project ÆGIS (2000) and Dis-armor (1999-2000).

In his projections, which since 1980 have been presented on architectural and sculptural monuments literally all over the world, using either video or frozen photographic stills and the technique of demontage, and referring to a strategy of the Berlin Dadaists of the 1920s (e.g., John Heartfield), the artist has tried to give life to the old historic monuments or to reveal their political message, which - though often in an historic-politically changed costume - remains topical. His projections often consist of authentic reminiscences and reflections of marginalized citizens, presented through a juxtaposition of selective images, like a succession of pairs of hands gesticulating, accompanied by the subjects’ voice-over remarks, allowing him for a communication with the society – an issue crucial to Wodiczko’s artistic thought.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Vehicle, 1973 – 19..., wood, plywood, bicycle parts, 72 x 78 x 460 cm

These politically charged projections, over 70 of them, have mesmerized crowds at such landmarks as Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London (1985); the Campanile in San Marco Square (Canadian Pavilion, XLII Biennale di Venezia 1986); Martin Luther Kirchturm (Documenta 8, Kassel 1987); the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC (1988); The Whitney Museum, New York (1989); the Lenin Monument, Leninplatz, East Berlin (1990); Zion Square, Jerusalem (1990); City Hall Tower, Krakow (1996), Bunker Hill Monument, Boston (1997), A-Bomb Dome, Hiroshima (1998), El Centro Cultural de Tijuana, Mexico (1998, 2001), Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China (1999), and the Old Courthouse, St. Louis, Missouri (2004).

Since 1985, Wodiczko has been honored with eight major retrospectives at such institutions as the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum Sztuki, Lodz; Fundacio Tapies, Barcelona; Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford; and the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Wodiczko's work has been exhibited in Documenta, the Paris Biennale, the Sydney Biennale, the Lyon Biennale, the Venice Biennale and other major international art festivals and exhibitions. His international carreer was sealed in 1998 with a prestige award and exhibition, The 4th International Hiroshima Art Prize for his contribution as an artist to world peace (Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art). In 2005 Krzysztof Wodiczko and architect Julian Bonder developed a major public monument commemorating the abolition of slavery in Nantes, France. Wodiczko is currently a finalist in the design competition for a memorial to the victims of Flight 587 in New York.

TEACHING: Wodiczko earned his MFA in 1968 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland, with an emphasis on architecture, industrial design and the visual arts. Before coming to MIT in 1991, Wodiczko was on the faculty or a visiting professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, California Institute of the Arts, Cooper Union School of Art, University of Hartford, New York Institute of Technology, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Ontario College of Art, Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, and Warsaw Polytechnic Institute. He lectures frequently around the world and has conducted seminars on such topics as the history and theory of the avant-garde; the theory and criticism of public art; nomadic design; art, identity and community; design, technology and ethics; the art of counter-memory; and interrogative design.