Filipka Rutkowska explores multiple dimensions of otherness, weaving them into personal history. Moving fluidly across performance, film, theater, and literature, s/he addresses socially and emotionally complex topics in a language that is light, accessible, and often infused with humor. Her practice connects two key currents that have profoundly shaped contemporary Polish art: critical art and queer performance. As a long-time assistant to Paweł Althamer, Rutkowska understands art as a collision between the shared and the intimate—a space where queerness functions both as a strategy for escaping rigid identity and bodily limits, and as a manifesto of social change.

Rutkowska’s works address themes such as working-class background, migration, sexuality, and educational practice. S/he experiments with a wide range of forms—stand-up, monodrama, rap, lecture, manifesto, guided tour, interview, feuilleton, letter, installation, drawing, collage, and assemblage. When constructing narratives, s/he often invokes iconic female figures who are ambivalent, internally conflicted, and far from utopian ideals of emancipation. For Rutkowska, emancipation is not an idealized vision but a confrontation with social reality. Over the years, s/he has engaged in dialogue with figures such as Virginia Woolf, Carrie Bradshaw, Elizabeth Taylor, and Elisabeth Costello.

Her works have been presented by institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Latvian Center for Contemporary Art, Gothenburg Biennale, Fondation Pernault Ricard in Paris, West Museum in The Hague, and Galeria Municipal do Porto. Residencies in Buenos Aires and Tokyo, along with participation in international seminars on minority art practices in Hong Kong and Cape Town, have further expanded her perspective. The artist has curated pop-up exhibitions on non-normative sexuality in Mexico City and Lisbon, and co-led a seminar on performance at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 2024–2025, s/he served on the jury for the competition for the best-designed book in Poland. A grantee of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the City of Warsaw, s/he also received the Ongoing Art Center Award in Tokyo for the best international artist. Collaborations include projects with Miu Miu, Vogue Poland, Boiler Room, and music festivals such as Unsound, Open’er, and Up To Date. The artist is the protagonist of two documentary films and, in 2025, presented her own short films at the New Horizons International Film Festival in Wrocław. 

In the spring of 2026, the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition will open at Galeria Studio in Warsaw, and her debut book will be published by HELA PRESS (Warsaw/London).