KLARA SZAFRAŃSKA
ARTIST STATEMENT
Klara Szafrańska is a Polish artist living in Nottingham, UK since 2017. She works with ceramic sculpture, as well as video, and performance. Their practice draws from the socio-political theme of fetish in the context of queer and (Central Eastern European) transnational identities, often linking social to the emotional.
Creating surreal dreamscapes from half imagined objects, her imagery references everyday materials seen in post-globalised realities. Often unfolding meanings from in between care-filled and durational clay processes, auto-fiction and visual storytelling. Their objects come from moments of yearning and are looking at reimagining the ways of holding spaces through circular exchanges between what’s psychologically experienced & what’s systematically understood, as an access point to question & assert the re-making of the personal & social realities.
Szafrańska’s practice opens up sculptural formats looking for sensory and time-based modes of interaction and expanding into artist-led live programmes. They engage transnational and queer identities, drawing on her Eastern European background and seeking transgressive methods of interactions with art and each other.
BIO
Their recent activities include: Exhibitions: Made in the Middle, touring: Leicester Gallery, Midlands Arts Centre (Birmingham), Hub (Sleaford), Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery (2025-6); Portals, Gasleak Mountain, Nottingham (2024); Members Show, Backlit Gallery, Nottingham (2024); Indelicate 4.0, Antwerp Mansion, West Art Collective, Manchester (2024); Let Them Eat Fake, Bad Art Presents, BWG Gallery,London (2023); Punk: Rage + Revolution, Backlit Gallery, Nottingham (2023); AA2A Residency: Process, Martin Hall, Loughborough University (2023); Communion, Surface Gallery, Nottingham (2023); Touch Me Baby!, Bad Art Presents, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London (2022), Let Them Eat Fake, Bad Art Presents, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London (2022); I moved to England (duo), Surface Gallery, Nottingham (2022). Residencies: BACKLIT Studio Residency (2023-24), AA2A Residency Loughborough University (2022-23); EMR Graduate Residency Surface Gallery, Nottingham (2022); Summer Camp, Nowy Teatr, Warsaw (2019). Commissions: immigrant punk (R&D at BACKLIT Gallery, 2023). Teaching and panels: immigrant punk methodology in visual arts practices - seminar, Nottingham Trent University; Zines and/as performance, Edinburgh Zine Festival; Workshops: Collective imagining through clay, National Justice Museum, Nottingham (2024), Capturing Shadows: immigrant punk, CEE Notts (2024), Starting Points, UKNA x No Jobs In The Arts, Lincoln (2022).
Klara graduated from BA (Hons) Fine Art, Loughborough University and MFA Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University with Distinction. She was awarded the NTU MFA Fine Art Scholarship Award and NTU Future You Fund.
Her recent curatorial positions include Assistant Curator of Live Programmes, Nottingham Contemporary (2023-present).