Joanna Piotrowska

Joanna Piotrowska (born 1985) is a Polish artist based in London. She examines the human condition through performative acts and the construction of multiple ‘social landscapes’ using photography, performance and film. Family archives, self-defence manuals and psychotherapeutic methods are used as reference points as Piotrowska explores the complex roles which play out in everyday performance. Her psychologically charged photographs probe human behaviour and the dynamics of familial relations, exploring intimacy, violence, control, and self-protection. The artist reveals moments of care as well as hierarchies of power, anxieties, and imposed conventions that play out in the domestic sphere.

Her work has been exhibited at Le BAL, Paris (2023), Tate Britain (2019), Kunsthalle Basel (2019) and MoMA, New York (2018). She was also included in the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), and the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018).

Education Installation view, Art Now. Joanna Piotrowska: All Our False Devices (2019) Piotrowska earned an MFA from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2013.

Career Piotrowska's 2014 series "FROWST" is a series of staged family portraits. The photos were published in a book by the same name, which won the First Book Award in 2014.

After winning one of the three Jerwood/Photoworks Awards in 2015, Piotrowska focused on photographing teenage girls in self-defense poses. She shot the series in Poland, finding subjects through friends and casting agencies that worked with aspiring actresses.

In 2016, she began her "Frantic" series, in which she asked adults to construct homemade forts from their personal belongings. She traveled to Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, photographing her subjects in their homes. Installation View, Joanna Piotrowska: Stable Vices, Kunsthalle Basel (2019).

Exhibitions Being: New Photography 2018, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 2018. Curated by Lucy Gallun. Our Red Sky, Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden. 2020/21. Joanna Piotrowska: Sleeping Throat, Bitter Thirst, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany, 2022. Curated by Adam Budak and Robert Knoke 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art: Manifesto of Fragility, Lyon, France, 2022. 59th Venice Biennale of Art: The Milk of Dreams, Venice, Italy, 2022. Curated by Ceclia Alemani. Joanna Piotrowska: Entre Nous, Le BaL, Paris, France, 2023. Curated by Diane Dufour and Julie Héraut.

Publications Joanna Piotrowska: FROWST, London: Mack, 2014, 48 p., Joanna Piotrowska: Frantic, with texts by Sara De Chiara, Anouchka Grose, Pier Paolo Tamburelli. Milan: Humboldt Books, 2017. 108p. ISBN 9788899385354 Joanna Piotrowska, Untitled, 2017. Silver gelatine hand print, 21 x 27cm.Joanna Piotrowska: Stable Vices, with essays from Sara De Chiara, Joanna Bednarek and Dorota Masłowska, London: Mack, 2021, 176 p.,