In her first US solo exhibition, Karolina Wojtas is sending us a conceptual care package, as an installation titled Made in Poland. Presented here are images of her family, friends, sometimes herself, kitsch objects, and folkish cultural treasures. These images are printed onto inkjet paper and textiles; soft sculptures, a video, and a text piece in the form of a letter together make up Wojtas’s own little fun fair in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery.

There is a cultural legend in Poland about a “rich uncle from America” that everyone’s parents or grandparents used to have. This mythological uncle who emigrated from the US would send back care packages with clothes, food, and little treasures from America. This exhibition flips the tale into Wojtas’s own fable and conjures up a rich aunt from Poland who mails Polish cultural
treasures to her nephew in America.

Wojtas’s work derives from her surroundings and experiences—childhood, education, siblings, first love, and death. Her images originate from amateur pictures found on the internet; all taken in situations that are almost impossible to explain. She is an artist whose work combines photography, installation, and performance to create spaces full of surprise, childlike imagination, and spontaneity. For her, art is an endless game and experiment, where audiences become part of the experience.

Made in Poland inhabits an unencumbered visual maze of play that is free of restrictions and traditional conventions—all birthed from Wojtas’s imagination and let loose in Syracuse. This
project is truly an export of experimentation and curiosity—like a traveling souvenir shop, but with an underlying absurdity that is both terrifying and terrific.

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Karolina Wojtas (b. 1996, Poland) has presented her works in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad, at the Asama International Photo Festival, Japan (2025), Oslo Negative (2024), Foto Arsenal Wien (2023), and Foam Amsterdam (2021), to name only a few. She is a two-time recipient of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage scholarship and has received numerous awards and nominations, including an Images Vevey Book Award 2025–26 Honorable Mention. Her work has appeared in such publications as the British Journal of
Photography, Foam Magazine, The Guardian, and King Kong Magazine. Wojtas graduated from the Lodz Film School and the Institute of Creative Photography in the Czech Republic. In 2019 she opened her own museum in her home village of Podkarpacie, Poland.

karolinawojtas.com

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