LAUREATES
GRAND PRIX
MAŁGORZATA GORZELEWSKA-NAMIOTA
KAMIAŃ NA KAMIANIU
STROLLER, ACRYLIC PAINT ON STONES | 75X140X200 | 2024
For an uncompromising exploration of the experience of motherhood, stripped of its cultural idealisation. Fragments of a child’s body, drawn from the artist’s private archive and transferred onto natural stones, confront the child’s fragility and corporeality with the physical weight of matter. The work addresses motherhood also as an experience of burden, fragmentation and ambivalence, creating a powerful and deeply personal image far removed from safe and idealised representations of the subject.
II PLACE
MACIEJ ZAPIÓR, ARTEM KOVAL
CIRCUMNAVIGATION IN TIME
SOLYGRAPHY | 100X200 | 2025
For creating a project in which time and light become the actual material of the artwork, and art meets science on a scale extending beyond a single object or location. A global network of solargraphic cameras and a programmed rhythm of exposure transform the Earth’s movement and the passage of time into a visual record. The work compellingly embodies the idea of “Contexts”, bringing together art, science, technology and international collaboration within a single creative process.
III PLACE
WERONIKA TADAJ-KRÓLIKIEWICZ
PODŁOGA II
DRAWING ON PAPER | 100X70 | 2023
For an exceptionally conscious use of perspective and scale, resulting in a spatial paradox. The shape of the image and the construction of its perspective evoke the experience of looking through a lens or at a microscopic magnification, while within this apparent “close-up” an expansive interior space opens up. The result is a compelling impossible figure in which proximity and distance, detail and space, coexist simultaneously.
HONOURABLE MENTION
MARTA CZŁAPA
CZUŁE WNĘTRZE
SCULPTURE | 60X50X50 | 2026
For constructing the work around a consistent oxymoron of form and meaning. Its soft, organic structure suggests shelter and safety, while concealing inward-facing spikes that transform protection into a potential threat. The tensions between softness and aggression, isolation and protection, safety and injury give the work its unsettling ambiguity.
HONOURABLE MENTION
ZUZANNA DYRDA
MAMA TATA TEO
MOKULITO CHINE COLLÉ | 3X100X70 | 2021
For the conscious use of the mokulito technique and an exceptional restraint of expression. Three autonomous representations do not compete with one another but form a harmonious whole in which what has been separated is brought together again. An additional dimension is introduced by inscriptions in Braille — intended to be read through touch, yet enclosed behind glass and therefore accessible only visually — creating a subtle tension between the visible and the invisible, accessibility and inaccessibility.
HONOURABLE MENTION
ADRIANNA GAJDZISZEWSKA
CZUŁE WNĘTRZE
UNTITLED | FOUND FOOTAGE VIDEO | 2024
For the subversive use of archival NASA footage to challenge the heroic image of great human achievement. A compilation of astronauts stumbling and falling transforms the monumental history of space exploration into an absurd, at times comic dance, revealing the awkwardness inherent in the process of achieving extraordinary things. At the same time, the work becomes an apt metaphor for the creative process itself — one filled with attempts, failures and seemingly insignificant gestures that precede the final result.
HONOURABLE MENTION
IZA SAWICKA
SPOWIEDNIK / SPOWIEDNICZKA
HANDMADE NAKED RAKU POTTERY
100X45X45 / 30X15X15 | 2025
For creating a compelling dialogue between two ceramic forms, built upon tensions of scale, weight and fragility. The monumental, dark “Spowiednik” and the small, pale and cracked “Spowiedniczka” evoke relationships between listening and confession, enclosure and disclosure, strength and vulnerability. The economy of means and the deliberate use of the properties of ceramic material give this juxtaposition a suggestive, almost archetypal quality.
HONOURABLE MENTION
GRZEGORZ TOMASIAK
IKONOKOD JAN 24 / IKONOKOD JAN 01
OWN TECHNIQUE | 72X47X3 – 2 PARTS | 2023
For an original combination of the language of traditional iconography with digital code, and for treating the image as a system that requires active interpretation by the viewer. Two QR codes, leading respectively to the beginning and the epilogue of the Apocalypse of St John, form a conceptual frame connecting an ancient text, sacred imagery and contemporary communication technology. The work particularly aptly embodies the idea of “Contexts”, demonstrating that meaning is not confined to a single medium but emerges at the intersection of image, text, code and the viewer’s ability to interpret them.
HONOURABLE MENTION
KRZYSZTOF ŁOBCZOWSKI
STRZĘP I
DRAWING, PENCIL ON PAPER | 90X50 | 2026
For exceptional technical discipline and mastery of execution, which become an integral part of the work’s meaning. The titular “fragment” — a form associated with accident, fraying and disintegration — is constructed with almost surgical precision in every mark and edge. The tension between the nature of the depicted form and the absolute control of its execution gives the work its distinctive formal power.
HONOURABLE MENTION
EWA ŁUCZYWO
ZAWIESZENIE MONUMENT
PHOTOGRAPHY | 150X900 | 2024
For an exceptionally conscious dialogue with the exhibition site and its history. The veiled figures are positioned above the historical portraits being uncovered at Struga Palace, creating a reversal of processes: where the architecture reveals previously hidden images and recovers memory, the contemporary work performs an act of concealment. This creates a precise loop of meanings between revealing and hiding, memory and absence, the contemporary artwork and the historical fabric of the site.
HONOURABLE MENTION
WIKTORIA NĘDZA
NOC
MIXED MEDIA | 100X130 | 2025
For an original approach to colour as a phenomenon produced not only by pigment, but also by light and the material structure of the painting. Modelled bands arranged into a dynamic surface refract light, causing the colour to shift with changing conditions and the viewer’s position. In this way, “Noc” expands the painterly understanding of colour to encompass the actual space and physicality of the artwork.
HONOURABLE MENTION
JOLANTA WDOWCZYK
WODY CZERWONE
INSTALATION | 71X54X90 | 2024
For creating an unsettling installation, open to interpretation and resistant to any single, definitive reading. The motif of a source, traditionally associated with life-giving water, is confronted with a liquid suggestive of blood, while a floor constructed from ammunition boxes introduces a context of violence and threat. The provisional nature of the structure further destabilises any sense of security, leaving the viewer with an image whose meaning cannot be easily resolved.
HONOURABLE MENTION
MAGDALENA WESOŁOWSKA – KUTA
ZASŁONA PERCEPCJI
BATIK INSTALLATION | 250X160 | 2025
For using textile to create a spatial and rhythmic arrangement of anthropomorphic forms that function both individually and as parts of a larger whole. Their varying degrees of contraction and opening, together with their circular arrangement, evoke associations with cyclicality, transformation and internal circulation. The work crosses the boundaries between textile, object and installation, creating a visually powerful spatial structure.
SPECIAL MENTION OF THE STRUGA PALACE FOUNDATION
KATARZYNA LASKUS – STWORA
DESTRUKCJA NOWOHUCKA TRYPTYK
OWN TECHNIQUE | 2019
For the exceptional relationship established between the work, its exhibition site and the material memory of that site. Photographic images of Nowa Huta, printed on an impermanent support and subjected to a prolonged process of natural degradation, gradually lose successive layers, legibility and the identity of the place they depict. At Struga Palace, this process encounters its opposite — the uncovering of historical layers and the recovery of the memory inscribed within them — while the materiality of the work almost merges with the fabric of the walls, blurring the boundary between artwork and site.