Soft Smiths. Contemporary Women’s* Metalwork
Center of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko | 2025
The Soft Smiths exhibition tells the story of women reaching for what had long been inaccessible to them—fire, metal, strength. It is a symbolic revolt against Swarog, the Slavic god of the sun, fire, and metallurgy, and the patron of blacksmiths. The patriarchal myth of smithing is here reclaimed, melted down, and transformed into new narratives. From the forge emerge the Swarożyce—new goddesses and their metallic manifestos.
This group exhibition, set in the Orangery and the Sculpture Park, presents works by eleven contemporary international women artists who work with metal. They weld, bend, cast, and cut, combining technical skill with critical reflection. These artists redefine both the form and meaning of metal, imbuing it with new sensitivity, subject matter, aesthetics, and political depth. They reclaim the material not as inert matter but as a living companion—a source of meaning and emotion. Though often associated with hardness, weight, and monumentality, in the artists’ hands, metal becomes flexible and responsive to emotion and nuance.
Their works explore themes of embodiment, ecology, mourning, care, violence, and relations with non-human beings and their processes. Through steel, aluminum, and lead, they inscribe microhistories: of mothers, daughters, laborers, warriors.
Contemporary metalwork returns here as a medium of critical reflection and resistance against dominant narratives. These practices align with a broader trend of “new materiality” in art—a return to working with matter, a redefinition of traditional craft techniques, and a revaluation of the bodily labor of creation. The artists appropriate techniques once used to build monuments and bridges, employing them to tell their own stories. In a world dematerialized by digitization, their works bear witness to the revival of the “magic of matter.”
Dates: July 5 – August 24, 2025
Curators: Michalina Sablik, Magdalena Lazar
Artists: Michalina Bigaj, Hannah Sophie Dunkelberg, Agata Ingarden, Lito Kattou, Magdalena Lazar, Lucia Leuci, Markéta Magidová, Ola Nenko, Emma Passera, Ala Savashevich, Weronika Wysocka
To explore the evolution of creative consciousness, Weronika becomes a medium – time, history, and memory flow through her. She guides the audience through historical contexts and emotional artistic states, archetypes, ethos, values, and the egos of creators from different eras, revealing the transformations of their roles in the (art)world and the (uni)verse.
During the performance, the artist uses objects she has made, a surrealist clock shield and hand spiral scepter, which help her to pass through different times and bodies.
The catalogue for the exhibition “Swarożyce. Contemporary Woman’s* Metalwork”* is now available, designed by Karolina Pietrzyk and Tobi Wenig. It includes the following texts:
- “Swarożyce. Emancipation and Women’s* Metalwork” – a curatorial text by Magdalena Lazar and Michalina Sablik
- “Reclaiming the Myth” by Aleksandra Skowrońska – an essay on the potential of myth as a tool for cultural critique and building alternative narratives
- “Female Elements” by Zofia Małysa-Janczy – a history of women working with metal: from mythological representations, through industrial labor and the Bauhaus era, to contemporary artistic strategies
- “Phenomena” by Weronika Wysocka – a short story complementing her artwork presented in the exhibition