Oskar Chmioła

Short biography

Oskar Chmioła, born in Lublin in 1987, lives and works in Szczecin. He is a visual artist, performance artist, art therapist, teacher, curator, cultural organiser and writer, and a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and of studies in pedagogy and education and therapy. He creates performances, multimedia installations, videos, site-specific works, coding art, process-based projects, collective performances and inclusive situations. He has performed abroad and at major festivals and events devoted to ephemeral art in Poland. He originated Psychoperformance, Perfotherapy, Performative Communication, IndywiduAkcja, Performative Cinema, Performance Tourism and SpaceTime Performance, a format of collective performative actions based on communication without dialogue that he has developed since 2013. In his educational and therapeutic practice he works with the body, movement, sound, sensory integration, alternative communication and creativity. His training includes sound therapy, the neuroaesthetics of music, music theory, sensory integration and yoga for children. His art takes the form that, after considering the subject, place, relationships and tension, proves most appropriate to the experience it is intended to initiate.

Education

• 2018–2020 — WSZiP: early childhood and primary education with corrective-compensatory gymnastics, MA.
• 2017–2018 — Higher School of Humanities: education and rehabilitation of people on the autism spectrum, postgraduate studies.
• 2015–2017 — University of Szczecin: pedagogical qualification, postgraduate studies.
• 2009–2012 — Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw: Cinematography Art and Technology, BA under Prof Andrzej J. Jaroszewicz.
• 2007–2009 — interior architecture and theatrical and film make-up.
• 2000–2007 — art middle school and high school.
• 1997–2000 — Ewa Misztal Art School.

Completed courses — Copernicus College

Online academic courses at Copernicus College, a joint project of the Copernicus Center Foundation and the Jagiellonian University. Copernicus College

• The Evolution of Human Languagecompleted
• Artificial Intelligence and Ethicscompleted · certificate
• Consciousness and Emotionscompleted
• The Extended Mindcompleted
• Consciousnesscompleted · certificate
• The Evolution of Languagecompleted
• Introduction to Philosophy of Sciencecompleted · certificate
• Anthropology: Biology–Culture–Mindcompleted · certificate
• The Neuroaesthetics of Musiccompleted · certificate
• Imagination and Creativitycompleted
• The Psychology of Designcompleted
• The Psychology of Creativitycompleted · certificate
• Speech Disorderscompleted
• The Neurobiology of Beautycompleted
• Topics in Psychiatry and Clinical Psychologycompleted · certificate
• Introduction to Cognitive Psychologycompleted · certificate

Full biography

Oskar Chmioła, born in Lublin in 1987, lives and works in Szczecin. He is a visual artist, performance artist, art therapist, teacher, curator, cultural organiser, graphic designer and writer. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and completed pedagogical and educational and therapeutic studies covering, among other areas, work with people on the autism spectrum, preschool and primary education, and corrective and compensatory gymnastics. At the Academy’s Faculty of Media Art, he studied with Mirosław Bałka, Leon Tarasewicz, Anda Rottenberg and Grzegorz Kowalski, among others. His practice encompasses performance art, multimedia installations, video, coding art, site-specific work, contextual, process-based and situational projects, collective performances, educational activities, inclusive initiatives, texts, manifestos, books, treatises and original artistic and methodological concepts.

Chmioła develops his own language of action at the intersection of ephemeral art, work with the body, investigations of presence, education, accessibility, alternative communication and criticism of contemporary systems for organising human life. He has performed in Poland and abroad, presenting work in London, Copenhagen, Venice, Monaco Monte Carlo, Cannes, Milan, Warsaw, Kraków, Gdańsk, Szczecin, Lublin, Sokołowsko, Poznań and Piotrków Trybunalski, among other places. He has participated in major Polish festivals and contexts for performance and ephemeral art. His actions have been presented in art institutions, theatres, galleries and festival settings, as well as public, educational, social and digital spaces.

He is the author of the Performative Cinema Manifesto and originated concepts and practices including Psychoperformance, Perfotherapy, Performative Communication, IndywiduAkcja, Performance Tourism, SpaceTime Performance, perfonemes and free activity. Since 2013 he has organised SpaceTime Performance meetings: collective performative actions in which he develops communication without dialogue through any means of expression, including gesture, movement, image, sound, objects, signs, cultural symbols, space and different artistic media. This aspect of his practice grows from the conviction that communication need not take the form of conversation to be precise, effective and profound. It can function as a shared field of presence, response, decision, tension, silence and action.

In his work, form does not precede content. It emerges from considering the subject, place, body, time, participants, witnesses, social tension and the kind of transformation to be initiated. His art may therefore take the form of a single gesture, a situation in public space, an action with a camera, a multimedia installation, a collective performance, a text, an educational process, an accessibility project or an extended psychoperformative structure. The final shape of a work follows from what proves most necessary, apt and appropriate to the problem at hand.

Alongside his artistic work, he develops educational, therapeutic and accessibility activities. He has over ten years of experience working with neurodivergent people, people on the autism spectrum, people with communication difficulties, disabled people and people with particular support needs. He has worked with children, young people and adults, including people with developmental aphasia, Asperger syndrome, ADHD, Down syndrome, affective disorders, personality disorders and other developmental, cognitive, sensory and emotional difficulties. He leads creative sessions, gymnastics with corrective and compensatory elements, sensorimotor activities, sensory integration, yoga, sound therapy, theatre, film, robotics and creativity sessions. His regular work includes delivering a full programme of sound therapy across a network of therapeutic preschools and sessions with young people and adults at the A TO MY Association.

In the field of music, he has completed training in sound therapy, the neuroaesthetics of music and music theory. He works with sound as a means of regulation, concentration, calming, activation and establishing contact. His interest lies less in spectacular or esoteric notions of ‘healing’ than in working with resonance, rhythm, pauses, repetition, decay, breath and thresholds of arousal. He treats sound as a medium that can support bodily presence, organise attention and facilitate a transition from overload to a more ordered state of listening. In practice, he mainly uses hammered bowls, crystal bowls and tuning forks, as well as Koshi chimes, a monochord, a simple harmonium and gongs.

Alternative communication is an important area of his practice. He has completed training in AAC, Augmentative and Alternative Communication, and makes particularly extensive use of Pictogram Ideogram Communication. He treats it not merely as a substitute for speech, but as a fully developed system for working with images, signs, the structure of meaning, relationships and the agency of people who communicate in ways other than conventional verbal dialogue. This understanding of communication also informs his performances, collective actions, educational projects and accessibility practices.

Chmioła has completed numerous additional courses and training programmes, including PEP-R assessment, social skills training, AAC, ceramics, introduction to cognitive psychology, topics in psychiatry and clinical psychology, the neuroaesthetics of music, anthropology: biology–culture–mind, introduction to philosophy of science, consciousness, website design, 3D Max and training in interpreting children’s drawings. He combines this preparation with pedagogical, sensory, communicative, cognitive, artistic, musical and technological practice. He serves as an accessibility consultant at the In Situ Contemporary Art Foundation, designs specialist educational aids and co-creates inclusive artistic and social initiatives.

He is also the author of the novel Au(c)tor, the online book Phenomenology: Guardian of What Is Human, the treatise Art after AI: Art, Technology, Violence, and a compendium, methodological study and forthcoming handbook of Psychoperformance. He understands Psychoperformance as his own method for designing symbolic actions in which body, image, word, gesture, sound, object, space, time, intention and meaning create a transition from recognition to action. It is neither psychotherapy, medicine, coaching nor religious ritual, but an artistic, educational and self-regulatory method that may support the organisation of experience, agency, closure and the decision that follows.

In his writings and actions, he examines human entanglement in systems of prediction, averaging, algorithmic evaluation, the automation of experience and infrastructural violence. He sets against these an understanding of art as a practice of reclaiming presence, imperfect agency and the right to change. At the centre of his work is the human being not as a perfect, efficient and optimised subject, but as fragile, strange, changeable, imperfect, embodied, prone to error and precisely for these reasons irreducibly human. He has received grants from, among others, the ZAiKS Fund for the Promotion of Creativity, the City of Gdańsk, the City of Sopot and the Marshal of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship.

Other biography versions

Activities in 2026

In 2026 he presented the interactive installation Anatomy of Uncertainty in the group exhibition ART DESTINATIONS. APO-THEO-SUS at the Institute of Cybernetics of Art and Spiż 7 Gallery in Gdańsk. In Sokołowsko he performed within Open Group’s PROTEST #3 during the Contexts Festival of Ephemeral Art and later led Asymptote, a Psychoperformance workshop at Sanatorium of Sound. In London he realised the independent public, site-specific Psychoperformance Restoring the Alternative.

Grants

• 2022 — ZAiKS Fund for the Promotion of Creativity.
• 2020 — City of Sopot artist grant.
• 2019 — City of Gdańsk cultural grant.
• 2017 — Marshal of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship artist grant.

CV — complete catalogue of activities · The artist’s archived biography