I am fading among the anonymity of glances, movements, smells, in the common absorption of air, in the common pulsation of juices under the skin...” The entire population of her figures is enough to fill a large public square. They are today over thousand but they have never been seen together. They remain in various museums, public and private collections in different parts of the world. They constitute a warning, a lasting anxiety.

Very few images in contemporary art are as emotive and as disturbing. She started with soft and pliable objects that were rough to the touch. First came the ‘Abakans’ (1966-75), so-called after her own name. These enormous three-dimensional hanging structures, woven form a variety of fibres. Michael Brenson has referred to as not only objects but also spaces. To enter the ‘Abakans’ and to remain inside them is to allow the sensation of interiority to become a condition.

Other soft works included ‘Embryology’ – a sequence of some 800 stuffed potato-shaped forms of varying sizes, covered with sacking and occasionally spilling their innards.
Gradually the objects became hard but continued to be made of fragile or perishable materials. These were the seated or standing figures, backs, hands, heads.

Shy by nature and lonely in the creative process, she has made her contact with people through over one hundred personal exhibitions, which she arranged herself as "still ceremony" hidden behind which she felt secure. She went on to receive large outdoor commissions in Italy, Japan, S.Korea, Israel, Lithuania and other countries she built out of bronze or stone large "spaces to contemplate", where the tension of space invited the viewer to go between the forms of petrified energy. Each of her forms figurative or non - figurative is rich in its own history. Abakanowicz changed the meaning of sculpture from object to look at into space to experience. The first was ‘Katarsis’, thirty-three larger than life size, bronze figures, for the Giuliano Gori collection, near Pistoia, Italy.

Subsequently she continues to make works in space. She made bronze figures, human heads, animal and dragon heads, and ‘Hand-Like Trees’ (1994-1997). This series is still in the process of completion. Apart from bronze, she used tree trunks with steel cuffs for her cycle of ‘War Games’ (1989 - 90).

Abakanowicz, creates ambiguous images with many meanings. Some are concealed, some combined with others. These are what every viewer must find for him or herself. To reveal them all would be to tell the reader how a film ends.

Awards:

Grand Prix of São Paulo Biennale, São Paulo, Brazil (1965)
Gottfried von Herder Prize, Vienna, Austria (1979)
Alfred Jurzykowski Prize, New York (1982)
Award for Distinction in Sculpture, granted by the Sculpture Center, New York (1993)
Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts, Mexico (1997)
Commander Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1998)
Officier de L' Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Paris, France (1999)
Cavaliere nell Ordine Al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (2000)
Visionaries! Award granted by American Craft Museum (2000)
Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, International Sculpture Center, (Hamilton, NJ, USA) (2005)