Joanna Piotrowska was born in 1985 in Warsaw. She currently lives in London.
Her works are mostly composed of black and white photographs and films, which explores individual forms of dependance on, and resistance to, social institutions. She stages situations to depict the dynamics of family relations, the condition of women, and humans’ control of animals. Emblematic of this approach is the Self-defense series (2014-2015), in which Piotrowska photographed young women in self-defense poses in their domestic environment, as well as the Frantic series (2016-2019), for which she asked adults to construct shelters within their own houses out of everyday objects and furniture. Like most of Piotrowska’s images, these performative scenes are the site of an unresolved tension between systems of alienation and strategies of liberation.
Her work has been exhibited in numerous international museums and biennials, such as Le Bal (Paris), Tate Britain (London), Kunsthalle Basel (Basel), MoMA (New York), the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), the 16th Lyon Biennale (2022) and the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018).
Joanna Piotrowska is represented by Galerie Thomas Zander (Cologne), Madragoa (Lisbon), Phillida Reid (London), and Dawid Radziszewski (Warsaw).
