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Email: manifolding [at] gmail.com
BIO
Sam Grabowska (b.1982 San Diego, CA, USA) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Denver, Colorado, USA. Working predominantly in sculpture, their installations aim to reconstruct the body after emotional trauma. Grabowska has exhibited their work in museums and galleries across the US and Sweden including the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Denver Art Museum, SOO Visual Art Center, and Rejmyre Art Lab. Their work has been reviewed in The Denver Post and Southwest Contemporary, among others. They hold a PhD in architecture with a cognate in cultural anthropology, an MH in interdisciplinary humanities, a BFA in film, and a BA in environmental design. Grabowska is the founder of Manifolding Labs, a research and consulting firm focusing on trauma-responsive spatial design.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work emerges from space and site, particularly through the lens of psychogeography—how experiences, muscle memory, and emotions imprint upon our environment and, in turn, shape us. Through sculpture and installation, I examine the body as a contested site, caught between interior psychological experiences and exterior hostile environments. How much can flesh, bone, and DNA survive before mutating or degrading beyond recognition? My identity as a queer, non-binary child of Polish immigrants drives recurring themes of the abject and otherness in my practice.
My materials intentionally blur the boundary between fleshy, vulnerable bodies and sterile, controlled environments. I primarily work with construction materials (conduit, concrete, mesh, fasteners), synthetics that mimic organics (singed and torn expanding foam, melted plastic, bioplastic), and traces of the human body (hair, sinew). My sculptures are designed to be inhabited—physically or imaginatively—often employing architectural representational techniques like topographical maps and sectional drawings.
By puncturing floors, mutating walls, and contracting thresholds, my installations disrupt the linearity and material homogeneity of institutional spaces. These interventions encourage viewers to recalibrate their proprioceptive and intuitive sense of being in space.
In my research, I am an early pioneer of trauma-informed architecture theory and practice. I draw from spatial theory, gender studies, psychoanalysis, and cultural anthropology to examine how we can build spaces that harm less and help regulate the nervous system. Whether in the studio or in the field, the way our bodies sensorily process the environment as well as the imprints of our cultural and interpersonal experiences are my primary concerns.
CV
Artist CV //// Academic/Research CV
Press
Review of “Haptic Terrain” / Denver Post / 2024
Review of “Haptic Terrain” / Southwest Contemporary / 2024
Review of “Haptic Terrain” / Out Front Magazine / 2024
Review of “INTAKE” / Southwest Contemporary / 2023
Review of “Grossly Affectionate” / Denver Post / 2022
Studio visit / Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art / 2021
Studio feature / Hyperallergic / 2022
Interview / Voyage Denver / 2021
Interview / The Denver Art Museum / 2022