Krzysztof Wodiczko - Early Life

Early Life

Krzysztof Wodiczko, son of Polish orchestra conductor Bohdan Wodiczko, was born in 1943 during the Warsaw ghetto uprising and grew up in post-war, Soviet-occupied, Poland. In 1967 while still a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, he began collaborating with director Jozef Patkowski and the Experimental Studio on sound performances. He graduated in 1968 with an M.F.A. degree in industrial design and worked for the next two years at UNITRA, Warsaw, designing popular electronic products. From 1970 until his emigration to Canada in 1977, he designed professional optical, mechanical, and electronic instruments at the Polish Optical Works.

In 1969, Wodiczko collaborated with Andrzej Dluzniewski and Wojchiech Wybieralski on a design proposal for a memorial to victims of Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. He also performed with Personal Instrument in the streets of Warsaw and participated in the Biennale de Paris as a leader of a group architectural project. He was a teaching assistant for two years, 1969–70, in the Basic Design Program at the Academy of Fine Arts before moving to the Warsaw Polytechnic Institute where he taught until 1976. Throughout the 1970s he continued his collaborations on sound and music performances with various musicians and artists.

In 1971, Wodiczko began work on Vehicle, which he tested the following year on the streets of Warsaw. In 1972 he created his first solo installation: Corridor at Galeria Wspolczesna, Warsaw. The following year he began exhibiting with Galeria Foksal, Warsaw. In 1975, Wodiczko traveled for the first time to the United States where he was artist-in-residence at the University of Illinois, Urbana and exhibited at N.A.M.E. Gallery, Chicago. He participated again in the Biennale de Paris, this time as a solo artist.

In 1976, Wodiczko began a two-year artist-in-residence program at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada. He emigrated from Poland in 1977, establishing residency in Canada teaching at the University of Guelph in Ontario, and began working with New York art dealer Hal Bromm. In 1979 he taught at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and continued teaching at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design until 1981. From 1981-1982 he was artist in residence at the South Australian School of Art (currently part of the University of South Australia in Adelaide). In 1983, Wodiczko established residency in New York City teaching at the New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury. The following year, he received Canadian citizenship and in 1986 resident-alien status in the United States. He began teaching at MIT in 1991, maintaining his residence in New York City while working in Cambridge, Massachusetts.