MARZENA ABRAHAMIK
Date: September 20th, 2025
Time: 1:00 – 2:00 PM CT
Cost: FREE
Location: Columbia College Chicago Student Center | 754 S Wabash Ave
In conjunction with the 2025 Filter Photo Festival, Filter Photo is pleased to present an artist talk with Marzena Abrahamik, as she discusses her project Underground.
Underground is a visual research project that presents a photographic exploration of women’s contributions to the Polish mining industry, as well as the communities, wilderness, and natural landscapes surrounding the mines in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (USCB)—the largest coal basin in Europe. In Upper Silesia, coal mines are ubiquitous– pressed against allotment lots, under neighborhoods, and between forests. In this project, I depict how the effects of mining are connected to communities around the mines, as their health, the surrounding ecosystems, and clean air are undermined in favor of the resources extracted from these areas. The photographs shift in scale from rocks to landscapes, and from sweeping views of communities to intimate environmental portraits.
Marzena Abrahamik (b. Poland, raised in Greece) is visually inspired by personal histories, attachments to unachievable and necessary for survival fantasies, and further investigating communal formations and transformations, with particular attention paid to policy, gender, and labor. She work through photographic series where images are anchored in historical events, where her formal interests in lighting, color, movement, and gesture, connect individual images into unimaginable bodies of work. Her approach to structuring and conceptualizing my work has been defined by her immigration history. Her cultural heritage informs her as an artist and educator, and is a motivating resource that provides insight and empathy to otherwise abstracted issues.
Recent exhibitions include the Chicago Cultural Center, Film School In Lodz, Johalla Projects, Heaven Gallery, Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Soccer Club Club, and Aperture. Abrahamik is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Scholar Award, Kosciuszko Foundation Graduate Studies and Research Scholarship Program, and IAS Artist Project Grant. Her work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography and Haas Library.