Born in Bydgoszcz, Poland, 1968
Lives and works in Warsaw, Poland
Joanna Rajkowska (born 1968) is a Polish artist based in Warsaw, working with objects, films, photography, installations, ephemeral actions, and widely discussed interventions in public space. She critically engages with the legacy, politics, and aesthetics of land art and employs the strategy of unfamiliarity as a political tool whilst focusing on the body and language as the foundations of social relationships. Her works often function as social sculptures in which collective memory, tensions, and desires might be manifested as public monuments interwoven into the urban tissue. Activating layers of meanings (both historical and ideological), they provoke and reveal lines of conflicts, but also serve as platforms for dialogue. As Joanna Rajkowska’s works are materializing through ‘urban legends’, press-cuttings, gossip and media debates, their form is always ‘unfinished’, so there is a possibility they will evolve and mutate beyond the artist’s initial intentions.
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Tom Jeffreys, What branches grow out of this stony rubbish, 2019
Tom Jeffreys, Joanna Rajkowska, Suiciders, 2018
Killing Pain with Language, Alice Butler, 2015 (on Painkillers)
Dedicated to the Polis, Jan Verwoert, 2012
Press on The Failure of Mankind (2019)
Press on Death of the Palm Tree (2019)
Press on Suiciders in Polish (2018)
Press on Painkillers (2014-2015)
Press on Forcing a Miracle (2012)
Press on Greetings from Jerusalem (2002)
Death of the Palm Tree, 1-14 June 2019, Warsaw, Poland
Chariot, Art Night 2018, London, UK
I shall not enter into your heaven, Teatr Powszechny, Warsaw, 18-19 November 2017
Forcing a Miracle, Museum of History of Polish Jews POLIN, Warsaw, Poland, 2016
Soon Everything Will Change, 2014
My Father Never Touched Me Like That, 2014
The Peterborough Child, 2012, permanent
Maya Gordon Goes To Chorzów, 2006
Greetings from Jerusalem, 2002, ongoing
Joanna Rajkowska, The Hatchling, Cody Dock, The Line, London
Joanna Rajkowska, Nomination for the International Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Artist Award 2019
Joanna Rajkowska in conversation with prof. Ken Gemes
Joanna Rajkowska, Illness as a Source of Art, National Museum Poznań, Poznań, Poland
Joanna Rajkowska, Painkillers, Permanent exhibition, Susch Muzeum, Switzerland
Joanna Rajkowska, Skip the Line! Populism and Unfulfilled Promises, 26 October – 30 November 2018
Joanna Rajkowska, Chariot, Art Night, London, 7 July 2018
Art Brussels, Solo presentation, Discovery Section, Booth D12 – 22 April 2018
Architecture After the Sunset, Solo exhibition, SKALA Poznań – 13 April – 15 May 2018
Suiciders, TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland
I shall not enter into your heaven, Teatr Powszechny, Warsaw, 18-19 November 2017
I shall not enter into your heaven, In the frame of the project Open City, Crossroads, Poland, 2017
Faces, The Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden, Germany, 2017
Konteksty, Event Horizon, 2017
Stitching and unstitching, Markiewicz / Rajkowska, 2017
THE FACE. A SEARCH FOR CLUES, The Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden, Germany, 2017
The Beguiling Siren is Thy Crest, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2017
Painkillers, Rampa, Istanbul, Turkey, 2017
Joanna Rajkowska, SALT Ulus, Ankara, 2016
Making use: Life in Post-artistic Times, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2016
Medicine in Art, MOCAK, Museum of Modern Art, Krakow, Poland, 2016
Hybridizing Earth, Discussing Multitude, Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea, 2016
DE-MO-CRA-CY, Labirynt Gallery, Lublin, Poland, 2016
Hommage to Kantor, Kyoto City University of Arts, Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto, Japan, 2015
A Beautiful Darkness, 26 October – 30 October 2015, Central St. Martins, London, 2015
I am burning Paris (Je brûle Paris), Cité international des Arts, Paris, France, 2015
Progress and Hygiene, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2015
Vot Ken You Mach, Muzeum Współczesne, Wrocław, Poland, 2015
The Wall. Art Face To Face With Borders, Careof DOCVA in Milan, Italy, 2015
The Light of the Lodge, Charim Gallery, Vienna, Austria, 2014
A tourist in Other People’s Reality, Vestry House Museum, London, 2013