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.    

  Click to download the artist’s CV  

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  

The Plastic Palm and Memories in the Making: Conceptual Art Work on Warsaw’s Jerusalem Avenue, Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer, 2010

General Press

Press on The Failure of Mankind (2019)

FAD Magazine, 2019

Press on The Hatchling (2019)

Press on Death of the Palm Tree (2019)

The First News, 2018

Press on Suiciders in Polish (2018)

Press on Trafostation (2016)

Press on Painkillers (2014-2015)

Press on Forcing a Miracle (2012)

Press on Greetings from Jerusalem (2002)

Joanna Rajkowska, The Hatchling, Cody Dock, The Line, London

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  

Trafostation, 2016  

Rosa’s Passage, 2014  

Soon Everything Will Change, 2014   

The Light of The Lodge, 2014  

All-Seeing Eye, 2013  

The Peterborough Child, 2012, permanent  

Forcing a Miracle, 2012   

Benjamin in Konya, 2010  

Chariot, 2010  

Camping Jenin, 2008  

Oxygenator, 2007  

Greetings from Jerusalem, 2002, ongoing  

Let Me Wash Your Hands, 1994  

Joanna Rajkowska, The Penubral Age . Art in the  Time of Planetary change,  Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw. Group show, 5 June – 13 September, 2020

Joanna Rajkowska, Every Day Forms of Resistance, The Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw. Group show, 24 April  – 28 August, 2020

Joanna Rajkowska, Far Too Many Stories to Fit into so Small a Box, The Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw. Group show,  25 October, 2019 – 3 May, 2020 

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

Frieze Sculpture, (The Hatchling), Regents Park, London, UK
, 2019

Joanna Rajkowska, The Hatchling, 3 July – 6 October 2019, Frieze Sculpture, Regent’s Park, London, UK

Female Artists and the Moving Image in Art in Poland: From 1970s to the Present, TOP Museum, Tokyo Japan

Joanna Rajkowska, Death of the Palm Tree, on the occasion of The World Environment Day, 1-14 June, 2019

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, The Peterborough Child in Hyperallergic Magazine. Five Artists Explore the Aesthetics of Mourning, June 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  

We knew the world not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent,

Goldsmiths, 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  

L’ HALLALI, La Station, Nice, 2013