Ligia Popławska is a Polish photographer and visual artist based in Antwerp, Belgium. Fascinated by natural phenomena and more-than-human ecologies, her art practice is based on speculative storytelling, exploring urgent ecological themes.
           After graduating from Art History at the University of Gdansk, she continued her education at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, having completed BFA and MFA in Photography with great distinction in 2020. In recent years she won several prestigious awards, including 1st Prize Decade of Change Series Award 2022 by 1854 British Journal of Photography, PhMuseum Days Award (2021) and Photography Prize funded by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (2020). She is a laureate of .tiff 2022 and member of FUTURES Photography nominated by FOMU Fotomuseum Antwerpen. In 2022 she was a recipient of an Emerging Talent Grant from the Flemish Government for continuing her artistic research. In 2023 she was nominated for Leica Oscar Barnack Award. Ligia exhibited at Bienal’23 Fotografia do Porto (Porto, solo), ENCONTROS DA IMAGEM (Braga, solo), FOMU (Antwerp), Valerie Traan Gallery (Antwerp), De Brakke Grond (Amsterdam), Helsinki Photo Festival, InCadaques Photo Festival, among others.
           Ligia works as a freelance photographer in the field of portrait, fashion, product and interior photography, and as a cultural producer in the art sector. In 2021-2023 she was a guest professor teaching photography at the Jewellery Design, Gold and Silversmithing Department, Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. She curated and wrote for a photography platform Intimate Structures. From September 2024 she is a researcher in the Art & Ecology research group at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, working on the project Whispers of the Primeval Forest (2024-2026). In between commercial and artistic projects, she is managing IN-DEPENDANCE by IBASHO, a new gallery in Antwerp.