The twin sisters Anna and Irena Nawrot were born on 21 March 1960 in Jarosław and live and work in Lublin. Graduates of the Art Education Institute (the Institute of Fine Arts at present) at the Maria Skłodowska-curie University in Lublin. They earned their diplomas in 1983.
Anna (together with Jan Gryka) has been running Galeria Biała at the Centre for Culture in Lublin since 1985. She also curates outdoor exhibitions (she co-curated the 10th edition of Open City in Lublin in 2018 with Mirosław Haponiuk). Her artistic output includes seventeen solo exhibitions (Galeria BWA and Galeria Biała in Lublin, Galeria Pracownia Dziekanka, Stodoła and Galeria Rzeźby SBWA Kuchnia in Warsaw, Galeria ON in Poznań and Stredoslovenská Galéria in Banska Bystrica, Galeria BWA in Kielce), and participated in fifty four group exhibitions in Poland and abroad. She works with photography, installation, text, object and fabric. She uses ready-made textile objects such as dresses, bed sheets, ties, or tapestries which she subject to recycling of a kind. They become records of personal experience of a biographical nature, as well as of broadly commented issues regarding the cultural image of sex, or gender related problems.
Irena has been associated with her home university since 1984 (at present, she runs the Institute of Photography and Visual Knowledge). A full professor since 2011. Her output includes thirty six solo exhibitions (Galeria Biała, Galeria Labirynt 2, Galeria BWA, Galeria Fotografii Prospero in Lublin, Galeria Pracownia Dziekanka, Galeria Stodoła and Mała Galeria ZPAF-CSW in Warsaw, Galeria ON in Poznań, Galeria FF in Łódź, Galerie Fotoforum in Kappeln, Galeria Pusta in Katowice, Stadtmuseum in Münster, Galéria Gerulata in Bratislava, Štátna Galéria in Banska Bystrica, Muzeum Stanisława Staszica in Piła, Bielska Galeria BWA in Bielsko-Biała, Box & Galerie XL, Cultureel Centrum in Maasmechelen, and Galeria BWA in Kielce), and eighty three group exhibitions in Poland and abroad. She works with intermedia photography. Her technique of choice consists in the multi-colouring of black and white photographic enlargements. In her photo stagings, she uses her experience of human corporeality as a vehicle of universal reflection on the passage of time in terms of personal experience. For the past few years, she has been enlarging and sewing her photographs to create large format patchworks.