Contemporary Lynx Magazine Award: Piotr Michalski
Honorary mention: Jan Kowal

Audience Award: Piotr Michalski

Main Prize: Sonia Kujawa
Honorary mention: Jan Kowal, Piotr Michalski
Jury Statement: Christl Baur, Ivana Sremčević Matijević, Zofia nierodzińska

Before we announce the results of our two days of intense, constructive and, at times, heated debate, we would like to extend our sincere thanks to all those who have been shortlisted for the exhibition. They are, in alphabetical order:

Oleksandr Holiuk, Klaudia Kasperska, Jan Kowal, Kacper Krajewski, Sonia Kujawa, Piotr Michalski, Małgorzata Wronska, Franek Warzywa

Please give them a round of applause. All of them are laureates of the various stages of the competition held at art academies all over Poland. We greatly appreciate the effort they have put into their individual works and the exhibition as a whole at the Gallery Studio BWA Wrocław.

During the last two days, as a jury, we have had the pleasure and honour of listening to the presentations of eight talented, highly qualified artists who use the possibilities of media art in a wise and conscientious way. The presented works showed multifaceted formats such as light and sound installations, 3D animations, film productions as well as objects and robotic works. The themes explored in the works include: psychological states, anxieties, identity issues related to gender, sexuality and descent, national belonging, as well as technology as a means of both emancipation and oppression. The productions that particularly caught our eye deal with questions of how to use technology, and how and whether to produce art at all in a situation of growing political and climatic crisis.

The jury wants to give to give to special mentions to the following two works:

Jan Kowal and his work Labor of own Hands, for his unpretentious approach to his peasant identity and its translation into visual language. For the emancipatory potential present in his works, which contribute to current social and historical debates rewriting the identity of Poles by pointing to their folk origins. Jan’s work breaks the seemingly universal, normalised aesthetics of art created in big cities.

We would like to honour Piotr Michalski for his formally interesting film experiment SODOM: a Gay Hyperpop Epic, for its courageous and socially relevant function, which appreciates marginalised voices and attitudes, connected to the LGBT+ community.
The narrative is imbued with Homeric elements that add depth, richness, and humour to the story. Adam’s journey is not just a physical one but also a spiritual one, as he confronts doubt and grapples with the question of what is most important in life. We are particularly keen to appreciate the communal character of the work, its polyvocality that deconstructs the dominant, individualised heroic narrative. This message resonates powerfully, especially in times when divisive forces threaten to tear societies apart.

Finally, we are particularly keen to acknowledge, and thus hand over the main prize to Sonia Kujawa, whose work Small Machines captured us with its unpretentiousness in its approach to technology, its balanced, environmentally conscious character. The machines constructed by Sonia are made from waste, objects from the attic, and scraps is highly motivating and refreshing for anyone seeking their own path. The author gives them a new meaning by setting them in motion. In doing so, she uses both knowledge and sensitivity. The post-apocalyptic work of the graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow does not evoke feelings of melancholy, but is an example of how to cope with a reality marked by scarcity. It is an acceptance of the fact that the world of consumption, as we know it, is passing away. It opens up the viewer to other possibilities of being in the world, based on collecting, on DIY, on coping with crisis in a creative way. It gives hope that a catastrophe is a stage to re-evaluate the attitudes that led us to it, a transformation rather than a definitive end.

It is with pleasure and conviction that we hand over the Best Diploma Award to Sonia Kujawa. Congratulations.