She lives and works in Kraków.
Her artistic practice encompasses performance, painting, drawing, photography, and video.
She graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. In 2018, she received a doctorate in fine arts from the Faculty of Art at the University of the National Education Commission in Kraków.
Joanna Pawlik’s work moves between questions concerning the social mechanisms of exclusion and personal realms of experience. In critically engaged works such as the video Balance and the performance series Stairs, she explores the boundaries of her own body, examines the concept of social norms, and often addresses disability in a subversive and provocative manner.
Through her artistic practice, Joanna Pawlik reveals the persisting taboos surrounding the bodies and sexuality of people with disabilities, as well as those whose bodies and identities fall outside various established norms.
Joanna Pawlik collaborates with some of Poland’s leading contemporary art institutions, including the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, the Wrocław Contemporary Museum, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery in Kraków, the Kronika Centre for Contemporary Art in Bytom, the Municipal Gallery Arsenał in Poznań, and the ZAMEK Culture Centre in Poznań.