Ada Augustyniak

Ada Augustyniak is a visual artist and philosopher working with a combination of visual narrative, picturebooks, analogue illustration and practical philosophy. She graduated in philosophy (withheld PhD studies in Chinese philosophy of language) and works at Jagiellonian University in Cracow (Poland) as a Mandarin Chinese language teacher. She also runs Drawing Philosophy Workshops for people of all ages. Whether it’s formal academic research, artistic practices or illustration commissions, she has been exploring relations between reality and the body-mind, performative power of language (verbal and visual) and methods of narrating everyday experience. She is also interested in challenging and deconstructing fixed, conditioned worldviews, especially in the context of social justice. Her priority is to combine visual art and philosophy. She is not only interested in visualizing or illustrating philosophical ideas, but in finding methods and forms to practice visual philosophy. She has been one of the finalists of the Bologna Illustration Exhibition (in 2021 and 2024) and her picturebooks have been selected for the Unpublished Picturebook Showcase 2 and 5 (2021 and 2023), by dPictus. She received the art scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage in Poland in 2016 and 2019 for picturebook projects.