The 2025 Katarzyna Kobro Award for Joanna Rajkowska

The  2025 Katarzyna Kobro Award was granted to Joanna Rajkowska by a jury composed of:

• Bożenna Biskupska (Jury Chair) – artist, President of the In Situ Foundation in Sokołowsko
• dr hab. Karolina Breguła, professor at the Academy of Art in Szczecin – visual artist, academic lecturer
• prof. Katarzyna Józefowicz – visual artist, Dean of the Faculty of Sculpture and Intermedia, Full Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk
• prof. dr hab. Marcin Berdyszak – visual artist, Head of the 1st Studio of Sculpture and Spatial Actions at the Faculty of Sculpture, University of Arts in Poznań

Maria Morzuch, curator of the Katarzyna Kobro Award, also participated in the jury deliberations.

The jury motivates its decision as follows:

The 2025 Katarzyna Kobro Award goes to Joanna Rajkowska for the universality of her artistic language and her consistent engagement with the general public in a shared reflection on the most important contemporary issues; for her extraordinary intuition in diagnosing socio-political realities, the prophetic nature of her actions, and empathy for the audiences and users of her works. Joanna Rajkowska's open-air activities remind us that art is a sphere of exchange and a practice of viewing the surrounding reality from unfamiliar perspectives. By providing a pretext for coexistence, Joanna Rajkowska's work opens us to a more mindful, empathetic view of the world and each other.

About the winner:

Joanna Rajkowska (born 1968) is an artist who creates objects, sculptures, performances, photographs, and projects in public spaces. She studied art history at the Jagiellonian University and painting under Professor Jerzy Nowosielski at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, and continued her studies at the State University of New York in 1994–1995. Her most renowned projects, such as Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue, Oxygenator, and Forcing a Miracle, uniquely combine social sensitivity, reflection on history, and poetic intervention in urban spaces. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Polityka Passport Award (2007). 

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The Katarzyna Kobro Award was initiated by Professor Józef Robakowski, with the blessings of the artist’s daughter, Nika Strzemińska; he raised consciousness of Kobro’s remarkable legacy, while signaling the close bond between the sculptor’s avant-garde achievements and today’s practice. The Katarzyna Kobro Award honors people who, like its namesake, are in constant search of answers to evolving questions and are forever negotiating art’s role in society. Every year, a jury of artists awards outstanding achievement in the visual arts in their broadest definition, particularly appreciating experimental and exploratory attitudes. The idea of this social, grass-roots award draws from the tradition of artists’ solidarity, which is at the very heart of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź.

From 2001 to 2009, the Kobro Award was presented at the Wschodnia Gallery, founded by the brothers Krzysztof and Dariusz Bieńkowski. In 2011, it moved to the Muzeum Sztuki. In 2023, the Award was presented at the W Y Gallery. Each year, the choice of the jury, composed of artists, resonates throughout the artistic community.

Winners from previous years:

• 2001 – Zbigniew Dłubak
• 2002 – Jürgen Blum-Kwiatkowski
• 2003 – Andrzej Dłużniewski
• 2004 – Krzysztof M. Bednarski
• 2005 – Teresa Murak
• 2006 – Krzysztof Wodiczko
• 2007 – Jerzy Lewczyński
• 2008 – Zbigniew Rybczyński
• 2009 – Andrzej Lachowicz
• 2011 – Zygmunt Rytka
• 2012 – Natalia LL
• 2013 – Cezary Bodzianowski
• 2014 – Robert Rumas
• 2015 – Jadwiga Sawicka
• 2016 – Karolina Wiktor
• 2017 – Piotr Bosacki
• 2018 – Cecylia Malik
• 2019 – Ewa Ciepielewska
• 2020 – Koji Kamoji
• 2022 - Elżbieta Jabłońska
• 2024 - Ewa Zarzycka

Founder of the Award

Fundacja Rodziny Staraków