Soft Smiths. Contemporary Women's* Metalwork

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."