JOANNA SZPROCH (b. 1979, Warsaw) Berlin-based lens-based visual artist and activist whose practice defies female martyrdom narratives, reclaiming joy, beauty, and agency as radical political acts. For two decades, Szproch has wielded photography, performance, and participatory formats as transformative tools for emancipation. Her work blends analog processes with writing and archival materials to explore women's shared experiences, creating spaces that foster flourishing through fearless experimentation and unapologetic self-expression. After earning her MA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź (2004), Szproch established herself in fashion photography before relocating to Berlin in 2012—a pivotal shift toward fine art projects focused on female liberation. This evolution, enriched by further studies in artistic research, participatory practices, urbanism, feminism, and memory culture, culminated in her acclaimed debut monograph Alltagsfantasie (Everyday Fantasy, 2023). Over a decade in the making, this multi-layered homage to female autonomy—supported by the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe and Kunstfonds Foundation, published by André Frère Éditions—was showcased internationally, at Rencontres d'Arles and Paris Photo (2023, 2024), receiving recognition for Photo Publication of the Year (PL, 2024) and the FEP Award (IT, 2024).
Szproch's uncompromising vision has been showcased internationally at Weserhalle (DE, 2018), GlogauAIR (DE, 2019), Melkweg Expo (NL, 2019), Rathaus Neukölln (DE, 2024), and A.K.T. (DE, 2025). Her self-published work Bigbul (2018) and participation in AIR WRO residency in Wrocław (2020) further expanded her artistic footprint. Beyond exhibition, Szproch's practice encompasses education and community engagement, including lecturing at HTK Academy for Design in Berlin, conducting workshops for Neue Nationalgalerie, and developing participative projects with Polyrama, Modiale, and Urbane Praxis. As contemporary forces attempt to reinstate androcentric order, Szproch's oeuvre stands as a luminous assertion of female sovereignty and imaginative resistance—a testament to art's enduring power as both personal testimony and collective liberation.
ALLTAGSFANTASIE
2023/2025
Various photographs,
printed fabric,
10x collage,
various objects,
handwriting,
stickers
Together with photographs of her muse, drawings by her daughter and always herself, Szproch's work takes us into a multi-layered world of experiences that represent the expression of liberation from predetermined structures. Having grown up under the conservative expectations of her native Poland, which she left in 2012, she creates a powerful visual expression of sexual autonomy in her work. She celebrates female sensuality in her exploration spanning more than a decade, complexly merging past and present in joy, fantasy and play.
Originally conceived as a book, Joanna Szproch's photographic work “Alltagsfantasie” (“Everyday Fantasy”) enters the space and expands into multiple layers of objects, photography, collage and fabric. Szproch understands the project to be larger than the photograph itself that it depicts; it is the feelings manifested in things that live in relationships with one another.
