Mikołaj Sobczak

Born 1989 in Poznań, Poland

Lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany

Mikołaj Sobczak works in the fields of video and painting; performative forms of expression are also an essential element of his artistic practice, often collaborating with German artist Nicholas Grafia. Sobczak’s work depicts everyday scenes as well as alternative historical images; in his surreal, collaged pictorial narratives he inserts protagonists from queer and transgender activism and countercultural emancipatory movements.

Sobczak studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in Miroslaw Balka‘s Studio for Spatial Activities, was a scholarship holder at the Berlin University of the Arts, and graduated as a Masters student in 2019 at the Kunstakademie Münster. In 2024 Mikołaj Sobczak held an institutional solo exhibition at Jester - Flanders Arts Institute, Genk, Belgium. The artist will have a solo exhibition at Salzburger Kunstverein, Austria in 2025. Recent exhibitions also include Ludwig Forum, Aachen (2023); Kunsthalle Münster (2022-2023); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2021); MUDAM, Luxembourg (2021) and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2020). Works by Sobczak and Nicholas Grafia were purchased by the Stiftung Junge Kunst of the Friends of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen as part of the 2019 graduate exhibition of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. 

Sobczak’s works are held in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Ludwig Forum, Aachen; The Perimeter, London; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw and The National Museum, Gdańsk, among others.

In 2021, Sobczak was awarded Poland‘s most prestigious art prize, the Paszport Polityk. He was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakadmie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam (2021-2023) and from September 2023 until February 2024 Sobczak was participating in the biannual residency program with Art Explora - Cité internationale des arts in Paris.