Joanna Rajkowska
Night Herons
FSP ING 0281
Written by: Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman, Joanna Rajkowska
Night Herons is a puppet film made together with the American writer and performer Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman.
Bogusia, Rela, Sara, Dzidek and his mother, Zbyszek, Zelik, Rajka, Robert and Basia – the characters of Night Herons are a community connected to personal stories of the film’s authors. There are also other protagonists – a roe deer, a badger, a wild boar, a dog and birds – the titular night herons. In the film, the past is mixed with the present – we follow the wartime fates of people, escapes through swamps and wandering, the Bydgoszcz block from the 1960s, an American synagogue, contemporary Nowogród, a forest, a glade. The film sets are scenes from the lives of families intertwined with the common story of Rajkowska and Sniderman.
Showing the connection between human and non-human characters in the narrative of Night Herons, was necessary for the creators to tell the story of the equality of beings in the face of death. The film characters try to bring back to life the animal victims of hunters, and when this fails, they hide them just as we do with human bodies – washing them, disinfecting wounds, combing them and wrapping them in cloth. Beautifully filmed intimate scenes and subtle movements of the puppets are accompanied by moving music, turning this world created from common materials into a mystery.
Joanna Rajkowska
b. 1968, Bydgoszcz
Visual and performance artist. Her work includes videos, installations, sculptures, and actions in the public space. Rajkowska studied mural painting in Professor Jerzy Nowosielski's studio at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts (1993). A year earlier, she received a master's degree in art history from the Jagiellonian University. She also studied at SUNY as part of the Studio Semester Program.She often combines art with activism. Her work addresses important issues such as memory, trauma, and social solidarity. Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue, 2002, which has become a symbol of Warsaw, remains her most famous project. In 2007, she was awarded the Passport of Polityka. In 2022, she received the Maria Anto and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Award for Outstanding Achievement and Artistic Attitude and the Grand Prize of the Polish Culture Foundation for Lifetime Achievement. In 2024, for her exhibition and film "Nigh Herons" at the lokal_30 gallery, she received the Grand Prize of the ING Polish Art Foundation.She lives and works in Warsaw.
b. 1968, Bydgoszcz
Visual and performance artist. Her work includes videos, installations, sculptures, and actions in the public space. Rajkowska studied mural painting in Professor Jerzy Nowosielski's studio at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts (1993). A year earlier, she received a master's degree in art history from the Jagiellonian University. She also studied at SUNY as part of the Studio Semester Program.
She often combines art with activism. Her work addresses important issues such as memory, trauma, and social solidarity. Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue, 2002, which has become a symbol of Warsaw, remains her most famous project. In 2007, she was awarded the Passport of Polityka. In 2022, she received the Maria Anto and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Award for Outstanding Achievement and Artistic Attitude and the Grand Prize of the Polish Culture Foundation for Lifetime Achievement. In 2024, for her exhibition and film "Nigh Herons" at the lokal_30 gallery, she received the Grand Prize of the ING Polish Art Foundation.
She lives and works in Warsaw.