Meet the artist: Goshka Macuga
20 October 2025
Internationally renowned Goshka Macuga is one of 23 artists featured in our 'Remember Respond Resist' exhibition. Discover more about this Polish-born British-based artist whose career has taken her all over the world.
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Goshka Macuga is a Polish artist who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1967 and now lives in London.
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She studied at both Central St. Martins College of Art and Design and Goldsmiths, University of Arts London.
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She is well known for her installations, sculptures, tapestries and collages and uses her work to question histories, political structures and the pressing issues of our time.
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She was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize in 2008.
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Macuga has had solo exhibitions in London, Barcelona, Hannover, Nüremberg, Milan, Berlin, Warsaw, Basel, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Shanghai.
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She has taken part in group exhibitions in Dallas, New York, Paris, Baden-Baden, Milan, Vienna and Venice.
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A Macuga was included in dOCUMENTA (13) which took place in Kassel, Germany in 2012. She created two large photorealistic tapestries for the prestigious exhibition. One was displayed in Kassel while its counterpart was displayed in Kabul, Afghanistan. The two-part work titled Of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not was designed to be exhibited simultaneously but never together in the same place.
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Macuga was elected a Royal Academician in 2024.
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Macuga’s installation Salt Looks Like Sugar was featured by fashion brand Miu Miu at Paris Fashion Week in 2024.
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In Remember Respond Resist you can see a range of Macuga's work including a large-scale 3D tapestry titled Make Tofu Not War which features three people dressed as animals in a dystopian scene. They're gathered together after an environmental protest with postures that suggest a sense of frustration. Objects including a spaceship and a cosmonaut can just been seen in the distance. It's an approach that is echoed in other works by Macuga, including a tapestry created for Norway’s parliament building in 2018 titled The Fable of the Wolf, the Polar Bear, the Reindeer and the Cosmonaut.
Images
Header: Goshka Macuga. Courtesy of the artist and Kate MacGarry. Photo by Kasia Bobula.
Article: Make Tofu Not War on display at The Box, Plymouth