Joanna Woś

Biography

Born in 1991 in Poland. Lives and works in Vienna.

Education:
2018 – 2026 – Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (class of Daniel Richter)
2016 – 2018 – Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw

Joanna Woś works through unconstrained and expressive motifs, combining autobiographical themes with traces of self-irony, focusing on corporeality and sexuality, with a touch of surrealism. One can find references to major figures in art history as well as to pornographic imagery. The juxtaposition of medieval spaces or religious symbols with strikingly contemporary bodies creates a sense of ambiguity. Woś’s figures cannot be categorized into one specific time or space, visualizing outdated patriarchal sensibilities as much as current sex-positive rhetoric.

The artist forms private, introspection-based works contemplating a vast and intricate spectrum of meaning—affect, pleasure, shame—that simultaneously frightens and overwhelms but also appeases the senses. In Woś’s work, eroticism is both seducing and repelling. In either case, it is a dive into the obscene, the primitive, and the taboo, moving along a distinct gradation from horror to pleasure. Woś continues a narrative of diving into the subconscious to reflect on what has been or is repressed, traumatic, and perverse.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2026
Solo exhibition at Wschód Naples (upcoming)

2024
Glittering Prize, Croy Nielsen, Vienna

2023
True to Life, Wschód New York
Soshiro Matsubara / Joanna Woś, Croy Nielsen Berlin (temporary space on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz)

2022
Frieze London with Wschód (Focus section), London
Precious and Tender, Croy Nielsen, Vienna

2020
Liste Showtime, Basel
Sweat, Wschód, Warsaw

2019
Nectar, Serce Człowieka, Warsaw Gallery Weekend

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2026
Gagosian, London (upcoming)
Constellations, Stereo x Croy Nielsen, Warsaw

2025
Fragility: The Dance of Life and Death, SPA Spazio Per Arte ETS, Oleggio
Day House, Night House. Works from the Radosław Kotarski Collection, MOCAK, Kraków

2024
Sophie Thun, Joanna Woś What do you do in bed?, Gdansk City Gallery 1, Gdansk

2023
Obsession I, ECHO Cologne (with Wschód)
I saw the other side of the sun with you, Cromwell Place, London

2022
Nothing is left to chance, Wschód Warsaw
DER RADWECHSEL, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Vienna

2021
Portraiture One Century Apart, Massimo De Carlo, Milan
Common Nocturnes, Simone Subal, NYC

2020
Rundgang, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

2019
PAT PAT PAT. A Romance with (Im)material, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Rundgang, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

2018
Night on Earth, MD_S Gallery, Wroclaw