Monika Fabijanska is an independent art historian and curator. Her critically acclaimed exhibition Women at War (Fridman Gallery, 2022), listed among ten best art exhibitions of 2022 by both The Washington Post and Frieze, is touring U.S. and Canadian university museums through 2026. Betsy Damon. Passages: Rites and Rituals (La MaMa Galleria, 2021) was among The New York Times’ best art shows of 2021, following ecofeminism(s) (Thomas Erben Gallery, 2020), and a groundbreaking The Un-Heroic Act: Representations of Rape in Contemporary Women's Art in the U.S. (John Jay College CUNY, 2018), which was ranked among the best NYC art shows in 2018 by Hyperallergic. Fabijanska provided the initiative and curatorial and art market consulting for The Museum of Modern Art acquisition and retrospective exhibition of Polish feminist sculptor Alina Szapocznikow (2012), and consulted on WACK! Art in the Feminist Revolution with curator Connie Butler (MoCA LA, NMWA, MoMA P.S.1, 2007-08).
She is currently working on a large transnational exhibition, supported with The Andy Warhol Foundation’s Curatorial Research Fellowship, and co-writing a book about artist Betsy Damon.
Her writing has been published in exhibition catalogs, edited volumes, ASAP Journal, Women’s Art Journal, as well as The Brooklyn Rail, BLOK Magazine, Magazyn Szum, Orońsko Sculpture Quarterly, etc. She regularly presents at CAA annual conferences.
Monika Fabijanska was Poland's cultural attaché in New York, 2000-10, serving as Deputy Director and later Director of the Polish Cultural Institute. She conceived and in 2011-13 served as Director/Curator of Poland-U.S. Campus Arts Project, a program she developed with Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, and University of Michigan.
Selected Publications
Fabijanska, Monika. “Bang Geul Han: Weaving Abortion Rights, Word by Word.” Transnational Visual Activism for Women’s Reproductive Rights: My Body, My Choice. ed. Basia Sliwinska. Routledge (forthcoming 2024)
Fabijanska, Monika. “To Censor or To Teach: Educational Reflections on a Foundational Exhibition.” Gender Violence, Art, and the Viewer: An Intervention. Eds. Ellen Caldwell, Cynthia Colburn, and Ella Gonzalez. Pennsylvania State University Press (forthcoming 2024).
Dango, Michael, and Monika Fabijanska. "Curating Art for Antirape and Ecofeminist Movements: A Conversation with Monika Fabijanska." ASAP/Journal, vol. 7 no. 3, September 2022, pp. 441-462.
Fabijanska, Monika. Women at War. Fridman Gallery New York, 2022.
Fabijanska, Monika. “Olia Fedorova and Dana Kavelina by Monika Fabijanska. Two Ukrainian artists talk about making art during wartime, the importance of vulnerability, and who writes history.” BOMB 161 Fall 2022, 15 Sept. 2022, pp. 102-116.
van der Walt, Dineke, and Monika Fabijanska. “Filling the Void in Contemporary Women’s Art History: An interview with Monika Fabijanska, the curator of The Un-Heroic Act.” Trauma-Informed Pedagogy: Addressing Gender-Based Violence in the Classroom. Eds. Jocelyn E. Marshall and Candace Skibba. Emerald, 2022, pp. 99-116.
Hershman Leeson, Lynn, and Monika Fabijanska. “In conversation: Lynn Hershman Leeson with Monika Fabijanska.” The Brooklyn Rail, Jul-Aug 2021, pp. 16-21.
Fabijanska, Monika, and Adam Mazur. “Emergency Art History. Monika Fabijanska in Conversation.” BLOK Magazine, 9 June 2021.
Fabijanska, Monika. “Joan Jonas’s “Moving Off the Land II” at Ocean Space in Venice.” Degree Critical, 15 Nov. 2019.
Fabijanska, Monika. The Un-Heroic Act: Representations of Rape in Contemporary Women's Art in the U.S. Shiva Gallery, John Jay College CUNY, 2018.