Dialogues of Art Historians and Artists is a series of meeting led by faculty members of the Adam Mickiewicz University Institute of Art History and the artists they invite. The topics of individual meetings, related to the current exhibitions held at the Arsenał Municipal Gallery – are the starting point for a discussion about art, exhibition practice or criticism, in which a confrontation of two perspectives of looking at, understanding and talking about art - i.e. those of art historians and artists - plays an important role.

Agata Jakubowska and Iwona Demko will talk about how and for what purpose women artists create their own image. They will pay special attention to those attitudes and activities in which the image plays a critical role in relation to social expectations formulated by various participants of social life and the world of art, also those considered progressive.

Agata Jakubowska – an art historian, professor at the Adam Mickiewicz University Art History Institute in Poznań, where she heads the Department of Modern Art History. The author of, among others: Na marginesach lustra. Ciało kobiece w prace polskich artystek (On the margins of the mirror. The female body in the work of Polish artists; Kraków: Universitas, 2004), Portrait wielokrotny dzieła Aliny Szapocznikow (Multiple Portrait of the Oeuvre of Alina Szapocznikow; Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2008), Artystki polskie (Polish Women Artists; ed., Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Szkolne PWN, 2011) and All-Women Art Spaces in Europe in the Long 1970s (co-edited with Katy Deepwell, Liverpool University Press, 2018), as well as numerous texts devoted to women's art and gender issues in contemporary art. She is currently conducting research on the history of women's art exhibitions in Poland and is preparing a monograph of Maria Pinińska-Bereś.

Iwona Demko – a vaginist artist, sculptress, feminist, artistic missionary, and an artivist. She creates objects, installations, site-specific works, videos, and sculptures. In 2001, she graduated from the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Since 2008 she has been working at her home university, being a "pink sheep" of the Faculty of Sculpture. In 2012 she defended her doctorate in fine arts on the basis of her doctoral thesis Waginatyzm / Vaginatism and her sculpture Kaplica Wagina / Vagina Chapel. In 2016 she received a post-doctoral degree on the basis of her work, which consisted in making friends and creating an exhibition with two girls working in prostitution. Co-curator of feminist exhibitions Krzytka, HERstoria sztuki, Gastronomki, Decydentki. A researcher of the history of the first female students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. She strongly believes in feminism and vaginatism, a religion she herself has created. Pink is her signature colour in life and art.

organisers: Arsenał Municipal Gallery, Adam Mickiewicz University Institute of Art History