Marta Dyczkowska (b.1980)

A 7th Woman (2019)

Marta Dyczkowska is a visual artist who predominantly works in video, photography, installation, and performance. Her work explores material culture through themes such as identity, memory, loss, trauma, and migration. Dyczkowska often links the past and present producing multiple narratives. Although highly personal in nature, her work also serves as social commentary.

Dyczkowska is originally from Poland, but lives and works in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She graduated from Ulster University School of Art & Design in 2018, where she was awarded the Artist Residency. She was also the recipient of the Platform Arts Graduate Residency and the Artist Moving Image NI Graduate Award. Her degree show was featured in the Circa Arts.

Dyczkowska is a keen collaborator and advocate of socially engaged art. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. She has been shortlisted for Open Call at Highlanes Gallery Drogheda, is a recipient of SIAP by ACNI and just completed a six-month residency with the Second Collective at Vault Artist Studios. During that time, she produced a new body of work for the Imagine Belfast Festival 21 with the support of Arts Council NI.

This piece is a fragment of a larger photographic, video and performance installation titled “A 7th Woman” which Dyczkowska produced during her residency at Ulster University and Platform Arts Gallery in 2018/ 2019. Inspired by Johns Berger’s book “A 7th Man” which portrayed the experiences of migrant men in Europe in the 1970’s, Dyczkowska drew attention to a modern migrant woman and explored the states of uncertainty and anxiety brought about by tumultuous events in British politics.

The work centred and responded directly to an app called “EU Exit: ID Document Check”, which was used to grant the right to remain in the UK after Brexit. Dyczkowska collaborated with other female Eastern European artists based in Northern Ireland. They voiced concerns and fears in relation to the new post-Brexit reality. Dyczkowska then photographed the women from behind, adding an element of performance and protest to the work.

This piece serves as an attempt to find a voice, not only for Dyczkowska herself, but for other European women living in the UK. “A 7th Woman” was first shown at Platform Arts Gallery during her first solo show, then at Graduate in Residence Show at Ulster University and finally during Polish Cultural Week in Belfast in 2019.