Wawel is Yours Festival 2025 Artist talk
Wawel Royal Castle, Krakow, Poland
Ania Orska, Joanna Hawrot, Alicja Śmietana
curated and moderated by Wojtek Piotr Onak

The September Artist Talk at Wawel Royal Castle brought together three exceptional artists whose practices intersect across material, gesture and emotion: jewellery designer Ania Orska, fashion designer and textile choreographer Joanna Hawrot, and violinist, composer and artistic researcher Alicja Śmietana. The conversation, which I curated and led, created a meeting point for disciplines that rarely share the same stage, yet are connected by a common impulse — to work with the body, memory and form.

Ania Orska spoke about jewellery as micro-architecture: objects worn close to the skin, absorbing stories, intimacy and the passage of time. Her reflections centred on travel, found materials, ecological responsibility and the transformative potential of craftsmanship. In her vision, jewellery is not an accessory but an autonomous language of art — a way of translating experience into form.

Joanna Hawrot offered a perspective rooted in movement and the sculptural quality of clothing. She described textile as a partner in creation, a material that carries intuition and structure simultaneously. Her work with kimono forms, modular garments and performative silhouettes expands the definition of what fashion can be, and how the body inhabits space. For Hawrot, clothing becomes a living architecture woven from gesture.

Alicja Śmietana connected these narratives through the physicality of sound. She spoke about music as matter — vibration that shapes bodies, emotions and spaces. Her insights touched on improvisation, muscle memory and the internal landscapes built through sound. In her practice, music becomes a sculpture of time, ephemeral yet precise.

The conversation at Wawel was an encounter of three distinct artistic methods converging in a shared field: the space where form ends and experience begins. It addressed creativity as a practice shaped by intuition, materiality, sensation and rigorous craft.

Set against the historic architecture of Wawel Royal Castle, the talk unfolded as both an intimate exchange and a public act of artistic thinking. It revealed how contemporary art — across any medium — grows through dialogue, tension and the willingness to listen.