BIENNIAL PROJECT
Entrance Installation
Ania Jaworska’s Entrance Installation is a site-specific design that was commissioned for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Jaworska took the most prominent existing feature of this room as the generator of her design: a circular information desk that is now encapsulated in a formal play of arches and columns, flattened into silhouettes, and painted in neon yellow. Jaworska’s design challenges our expectations of how we use and understand buildings. For instance, the architectural column traditionally signifies the idea of stability, while the columns seen here require supplementary support and provide no structure. Through a process of establishing and questioning architectural classification, Jaworska’s entrance entertains multiple and contradictory readings. In many ways, it is and is not furniture, a sculpture or a pavilion. Its color, material and form contrast its context, command attention, and divide the space. Indeed, the installation itself “contains” a “history” because of the information desk at its center—now engaged in a way that amplifies the decorative features of the room’s perimeter.
BIO
Ania Jaworska is an architect and educator. She currently is a visiting assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Architecture. She holds a master's degree in architecture from the Cracow University of Technology in Poland as well as the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Her practice focuses on exploring the connection between art and architecture, and her work explores bold simple forms, humor, and commentary as well as conceptual, historic, and cultural references.
Jaworska’s work was exhibited in numerous exhibitions, notably, at the 13th Venice Biennale, Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago Architecture Foundation, and Storefront for Art and Architecture. She recently had a solo exhibition titled BMO Harris Bank Chicago Works: Ania Jaworska at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and SET at Volume Gallery in Chicago. She designed a bookstore for the Graham Foundation and was a 2017 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program Finalist.
