Anna Niesterowicz

A visual artist working with video, installations, objects, and collages. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where she studied in the studio of Professor Grzegorz Kowalski. Her works often incorporate various archival materials, such as film recordings of an official visit by Edward Gierek to the kindergarten she attended or fragments of the Polish People's Republic (PRL) crime series 07 zgłoś się. Her works have been exhibited at the Foksal Gallery Foundation, the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, and the Transmission Gallery in Glasgow.

Anna Niesterowicz’s collages combine propaganda images of women from the PRL era with slogans from contemporary feminism. This juxtaposition brings together two contrasting discourses on women’s emancipation. The PRL-era imagery aimed to promote a new vision of women, who were not only mothers but also workers and farmers, and even political participants—like the peasant woman signing a peace appeal. However, women in press photographs were still depicted in a stereotypical manner: for instance, it is a man who hands the petition to a highlander woman for signing, and the beauty of young female farmers takes center stage. By referencing contemporary women’s movements—such as the #MeToo movement, which fights against harassment and sexual exploitation—Niesterowicz highlights their progressive nature on one hand, while on the other, she raises questions about whether women can be truly empowered without their active participation.