Kultur-Lige

Patrycja Dołowy

Short bio

Patrycja Dołowy – writer, multimedia artist, author of books, plays, performances, artistic installations, social activist, and promoter of science and art. She holds a PhD in natural sciences and is a graduate of the University of Warsaw and the Academy of Artistic Photography at the Higher School of Photography in Wrocław. She teaches at the Faculty of Artes Liberales at the University of Warsaw.
For years, she has been engaged in issues of identity and memory, basing her work on oral history and testimonies. Her projects are driven by a deep need to listen, uncover, and highlight what has been overlooked or rendered invisible for various reasons. She creates performative art and urban space interventions, working at the intersection of disciplines. Her work engages with difficult memories, space, the body, images, and words, focusing on recovering the voices of minorities and women.
Since 2011, she has been collecting Widoczki—small plaster cast images—an attempt to view space and memory from a different perspective. She was one of the initiators of planting a mirabelle tree in Warsaw’s Muranów district, a descendant of a historic tree that bore witness to the past.
She has participated in over 60 exhibitions in Poland and abroad. Her works and writings appear in the press, as well as in artistic and cultural journals. She is the author and co-author of several books, including I’ll Come Back When You’re Asleep. Conversations with the Children of the Holocaust (Wrócę, gdy będziesz spała, Czarne, 2019), Treasures. Seekers and Guardians of Jewish Memory (Skarby. Poszukiwacze i strażnicy żydowskiej pamięci, Czarne, 2022), The Cracked Mirror. An Attempt at a Portrait of Adam Czerniaków (Pęknięte lustro. Próba portretu Adama Czerniakowa, Filtry, 2024), I Won’t Leave Them Behind. On Jewish Caregivers During the War (Przecież ich nie zostawię. O żydowskich opiekunkach w czasie wojny, co-author, Czarne, 2018), A Matter of Character. Female Fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto (Kwestia charakteru. Bojowniczki z getta warszawskiego, co-author, Czarne, 2023). She has also contributed chapters to collective publications, essays, and plays, including Wanda (with Sylwia Chutnik), Hideout/Kryjówka, Mothers, Hindełe, the Magician’s Sister, and the libretto for the concert The Girls’ Orchestra of Birkenau.
A four-time recipient of a scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, she has also been awarded fellowships from Asylum Arts and the Tarbut Fellowship. She has received numerous awards and, in 2022, was honored with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising medal by the Association of Jewish Combatants and the Jewish Historical Institute Association for her efforts in defending human dignity and combating xenophobia, nationalism, and antisemitism.
Fot. Mikołaj Starzyński