Jolanta Wagner (b. 1950, Lodz), "I am not a bird II" from the series "Animal Inventory", 2025

Biography
Visual artist, specializing in drawing, painting and spatial actions. Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz (now the Władysław Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts), where she received her diploma in 1973 from the Faculty of Textiles in the studios of Roman Modzelewski and Maria Zielińska. Since 1974 she has been affiliated with her alma mater, since 2002 as a full professor. She runs the Studio of Interdisciplinary Visual Activities and has also lectured abroad.

She has received scholarships from the Royal Academy of Arts in London (1982), the Danish Ministry of Culture (1993, 1997) and the American CECIP Foundation (1999, 2002). Her work has been presented in more than 50 solo exhibitions and several hundred group exhibitions at home and abroad, including Germany, the Czech Republic, Bosnia, the United States and Denmark. She has won many awards, including the Grand Prix of the Biennale-Bosnia (1990) and honorable mentions at competitions in Pilsen and Wroclaw.

The starting point for many of her works is drawing - as a form of documenting everyday life and a tool for ordering reality. Since the 1980s, she has been developing the "Census" series, which is a visual inventory of objects, architecture and emotions. He creates drawings of a quasi-technical nature, combining precision with the poetics of personal recording. She uses ink and pen, works on tracing paper and old drawing boards. Her works resemble graphic hieroglyphs - a system of signs that tell the story of time, place and memory.

The "Inventory" also features objects designed by the classics of the Łódź avant-garde - Władysław Strzemiński and Roman Modzelewski - with whom the artist was personally associated. In her work, Jolanta Wagner combines formal order with emotional depth, building her own recognizable visual language, drawing from both art history and personal experience.