Joanna Rajkowska graduated in art history from the Jagiellonian University in 1992 and painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1993. Her early works relate to her own body, to its fragility and sexuality, and relate to traumatic narratives, such as the filmed performance Let Me Wash Your Hands (1994) and the sculpture Love of a Man Named Dog (1998). Larger projects such as Satisfaction Guaranteed (2000) and Twenty-Two Tasks (2003-2005) followed, in which the corporeal became a tissue of the social fabric. Her art became increasingly politically and socially engaged, addressing issues such as suppressed histories, religious tensions and collective traumas, culminating in Suiciders (2018), which focuses on women who made the dramatic decision to take their own lives and the anti-monument Sorry (2022), a lament for the refugees trapped on the Polish–Belarus border.

Her best-known project is Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue (2002), an artificial palm tree located at a busy intersection in the centre of Warsaw. Named after the street leading to a long-gone Jewish settlement, it highlights the void left by the absence of the Jewish community after the Holocaust. Conceived as an “open frame” filled by narratives created by the theatre of everyday life, its meaning has continuously evolved and it has come to function as an umbrella for political protests – most recently concerning the climate catastrophe, the war in Ukraine and the women’s strike. The palm tree has become a surreal symbol for Warsaw.

J. Rajkowska has employed the strategy of Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue in other projects in various locations, revealing what is suppressed, unwanted or desired, including Umeå Volcano (2006), Oxygenator (2007), Minaret (2009-2011) and Sumpfstadt/Swamptown (2012). Their forms vary from architectural phantasies, memory landscapes, fake archaeological excavations and underwater sculptures, to films, letters, drawings, photomontages and models.

Following the birth of her daughter Rosa in 2011, J. Rajkowska’s projects tended to be rooted in the experience of motherhood, especially her daughter’s illness. Although the notion of intimacy and weakness in public space proved to be almost unshowable, during this period she produced some of her most touching projects (Born in Berlin, 2012; The Peterborough Child, 2012; Rosa’s Passage, 2014; All-Seeing Eye, 2013).

Her focus on ecofeminism and environmental concerns began with Sumpfstadt/Swamptown (2012), a proposal to turn the area previously occupied by the Berlin Palace into a wildlife sanctuary with the aim of undoing its history. This would be followed by Avant-Garde for Insects (2016-2022), a study of bees engaging with artworks, a reflective piece on what will remain of human culture after the apocalypse. The installation Rhizopolis (2021) assumes that shelter for the human species will be provided underground by forest trees. The Hatchling (2019-2023), a series of giant acoustic egg sculptures, points to a new sensibility, an absolute condition of survival.

J. Rajkowska is well-recognised in Poland and abroad. Her artwork has been presented in the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, France, Switzerland, Brazil, Sweden, the United States, Bulgaria, Palestine, India, Japan, Turkey and Kenya among others.