by Redazione 29/10/2026
Categories: Exhibitions / Disclaimer
The Project Space at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence is hosting “BURROWED,” Joanna Piotrowska’s first solo exhibition at an Italian institution. Through photographs and collages, she explores the psychological tensions that run through intimacy, the body, and domestic spaces.
Digging beneath the surface of things, bringing to light what remains hidden, and examining the fragilities that lie behind everyday gestures: this is the core of the exploration in BURROWED, the exhibition by Joanna Piotrowska (Warsaw, 1985) that the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi is presenting in Florence from November 10, 2026, to January 24, 2027. The project, conceived specifically for the institution’s Project Space and curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, marks the artist’s first solo exhibition at an Italian institution and brings together a new body of work dedicated to the ambiguities of human relationships.
Through photography and collage, Piotrowska constructs images charged with psychological tension, in which the boundary between protection and oppression, vulnerability and resistance, intimacy and control remains constantly unstable. The scenes often seem suspended in a moment of anticipation, as if something were about to happen yet never quite reaching a conclusion. Each image thus becomes an open space, traversed by possibilities and meanings that cannot be immediately defined.
The exhibition’s title evokes the meaning of the English term “burrowed,” which refers to the act of digging to create a refuge—a secluded place to find shelter from the outside world. This inward movement, however, also takes on a deeper meaning: penetrating beneath the surface layers to reach what has been hidden, repressed, or struggles to find expression. It is precisely within this dimension that Piotrowska’s work unfolds, focusing on the spaces and gestures where psychological, physical, and domestic tensions converge. Familiar environments and bodily postures become elements through which to suggest complex dynamics, allowing anxieties and contradictions to emerge without resorting to an explicit narrative.
The home, the body, and everyday behaviors are thus transformed into sites of inquiry, where the need for security can coexist with forms of constraint, and the search for protection can reveal new vulnerabilities. The images do not offer definitive answers, but invite us to dwell on what remains ambiguous and difficult to decipher.
The works brought together in BURROWED do not form a linear narrative but present themselves as fragments of a broader story, to be reconstructed through the viewer’s gaze. This mode of interpretation evokes the psychoanalytic process, in which interpretation takes shape from incomplete and sometimes resistant materials—such as dreams, memories, and gestures—that do not necessarily form a coherent whole. Just as in our understanding of reality, the meaning of the images emerges through a discontinuous process, composed of associations, intuitions, and reinterpretations. Piotrowska thus entrusts the audience with an active role: observing the works means participating in the construction of a meaning that is never definitive but continually shifts through new interpretations.
The exhibition thus takes the form ofan experience of observation and reflection, in which photographs and collages become tools for exploring the relationships between the individual and the environment, between what is shown and what remains hidden. It is a journey that invites viewers to grapple with the contradictions of human experience and with that uncertain zone where the desire for protection can intertwine with control.
Joanna Piotrowska. BURROWED is promoted and organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi. The initiative is supported, on the public side, by the City of Florence, the Region of Tuscany, the Metropolitan City of Florence, and the Florence Chamber of Commerce. Private supporters include Fondazione CR Firenze, Intesa Sanpaolo, Fondazione Hillary Merkus Recordati, and the Palazzo Strozzi Partners Committee. Special thanks also go to Consonni Radziszewski, with offices in Lisbon, Milan, and Warsaw.
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| At Palazzo Strozzi, Joanna Piotrowska explores the hidden side of intimacy |
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