Discover the pulse of today’s most compelling artistic voices in the Artis Arundo Spotlight – a celebration of contemporary artists who shape the art world through their bold visions and intimate truth.
Among them – Helena Stiasny, whose work seeks to reclaim and elevate the female figure, positioning her as the central protagonist of the narrative rather than a passive object of desire; Courage Hunke, with the textured surface of the artwork evoking a personal family memory while also reflecting Ghana’s complex history; Aleksandra Liput and her artistic practice exploring themes of spirituality and enchanted objects, drawing deeply from ancient traditions and folklore, and more.
Their works – impressive, thoughtful, and transformative – are available through an online auction, with proceeds supporting artist-focused initiatives including grants, residencies, and project funding. This initiative, started by charismatic philanthropist Omenaa Mensah, lies at the heart of the OmenaArt Foundation’s mission: to spotlight talent that deserves far greater recognition on the global stage.
Artis Arundo Spotlight forms one of four chapters in this year’s TOP CHARITY Art exhibition, set once again in the luminous Orangery of the King John III Palace Museum in Wilanów, Warsaw.
This year’s exhibition invites viewers on a journey through four interwoven narratives: the TOP CHARITY Auction, a preview of the Foundation’s African art collection, a Sculpture Garden in collaboration with Opera Gallery, and the Artis Arundo Spotlight. Linking them all is Amedeo Modigliani’s Tête de Cariatide, a powerful homage to the aesthetics of African sculpture. The TOP CHARITY Art is open daily from 10:00 to 18:00 until 24 June.
Since its founding by the Omenaa Foundation in 2022, the auction has raised over 85 million PLN to support the philanthropic work of the Omenaa Foundation, the Rafał Brzoska Foundation, the OmenaArt Foundation, and their partners in the Philanthropic Consortium, making it one of Europe’s most impactful charity art events.
Bidding is open to everyone until 5 p.m. CET on June 8, 2025.
Below, we present 10 standout artists from the Artis Arundo Spotlight – just a glimpse of the diverse talent featured in the full exhibition. Each of these artists offers a powerful, singular perspective – works that challenge, comfort, and connect us in unexpected ways. Explore their vision. Support their journey. Have a chance to get a piece of extraordinary art for yourself. And be part of something bigger.
Zuzanna Szary
Zuzanna Szary investigates subtle relationships, often between species, and questions boundaries – both physical and metaphysical – delving into the moments when humans dissolve into their environment and the natural world. Her monumental painting Storm belongs to a series exploring the concept of home, rendered in the artist’s signature sensual, dreamlike style that merges figurative painting with elements of abstraction. It depicts an intimate scene of two women indoors, while a storm rages outside. The work simultaneously conveys the overwhelming force of nature and the emotional turbulence playing out within the home’s walls.
A central point in Szary’s practice is the articulation of space, particularly spaces that are primal or safe. The artist marks thresholds, seeking rites of passage between interior and exterior worlds. “It’s because I often dream about homes of strangers, houses I’ve never been to. In my dreams, I rarely find attics, but I do find cellars—sometimes filled with water”, she writes in the curatorial text accompanying her exhibition I Dream of the Houses of Unknown People at UFO Art Gallery.
Zuzanna Szary (b. 1995) works primarily in oil on canvas and ceramic sculpture. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, she has exhibited at institutions such as the BWA Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski and the Museum of Contemporary Art MOCAK in Kraków. In 2022, she received the Grand Prix of the Magdalena Abakanowicz Award from the University of the Arts in Poznań.
Kamil Kukla
Kamil Kukla works in painting, drawing, digital graphics, and experimental music. He began working on the painting Grip by drawing on the familiar language of allusive abstraction. A quasi-landscape emerged on the canvas relatively quickly – constructed through layered and tangled forms that merely evoke recognisable elements of reality, ones the brain instinctively registers. Yet in this matter, a rupture occurs: a fissure through which something sharply tangible breaks through – his left hand, gripping an imaginary object.
“This image is a lingering impression from a tram ride back from my studio, when I caught myself observing my own hand clinging to a metal pole inside the moving vehicle”, the artist states. “In that moment, my body appeared alien, as if seen from the perspective of a passenger trapped within it – someone who, on the one hand, can control it like a vehicle steered by personal will, and on the other, experiences it as a foreign entity, distant and unreachable, like a hill outlined on the horizon”. Grip is therefore a fusion of a purely painterly world and a specific autobiographical moment. It combines an introspective, painterly exploration with mundane reality, viewed from a POV angle. In that sense, it belongs to a series of self-portraits – not of the face, but of what the eyes embedded in that face see, as in a “first-person perspective” video game.
Kamil Kukla (b. 1989) is a painter and creator of digital graphics, objects, and experimental music. In 2013, he graduated from the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Since 2014, he has been teaching at the Faculty of Art at the Tarnów Academy.
In 2017, he participated in artist residencies at MeetFactory (Prague) and Dukley Art Center (Kotor, Montenegro). He is the recipient of the Grey House Foundation Award (2016) and a finalist of the Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation Award (2018). His works are part of museum and gallery collections, including MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, the National Museum in Gdańsk, and the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art in Kraków.
Helena Stiasny
Through her work, Helena Stiasny attempts to empower the female subject, making her the protagonist of the narrative rather than an object of desire. Mała krągłość (Small Round) was created following the artist’s visit to the Wallace Collection in London. The work engages in a dialogue with the museum’s Rococo paintings, which boldly and playfully explore female sexuality. The composition is pared down, focusing on a fragment of the female body. The model’s gaze – so often a central element in portraiture – is here only indirectly present, signified by a pair of glasses set aside. Their distinctive shape suggests the woman is not an anonymous subject, even though her face remains unseen; the glasses imply she has momentarily removed them to rest her head on the pillow in ease.
The title refers to a larger theme recently explored by Stiasny – The Great Round, a concept associated with archetypal femininity and its maternal dimension. By contrast, Small Round suggests a young woman on the cusp between girlhood and womanhood. As the artist herself notes, the painting is a meditation on her own body and identity, as a girl, woman, and lover.
Helena Stiasny (b. 1997) is a painter and illustrator. She graduated with distinction from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2020. Her works have been shown in both Polish and international exhibitions, including at the Institut Polonais de Paris (2024), the Royal Castle in Warsaw (2023), and the Every Woman Biennial in London (2021). Her paintings are part of numerous collections, including the Leif Djurhuus Collection, the Bech Risvig Collection, the Kowitz Family Foundation, the Borowik Collection, and the mBank Art Collection. She has received multiple distinctions, including from Kompas Młodej Sztuki (2022–2024), the LOOSTRO Autumn Salon of Art (2023), and the VeniceLands ArtPrize (2019).
Aleksandra Nowicka
Aleksandra Nowicka’s work operates within the sphere of figuration, drawing heavily on the language of photorealism. Her practice is an introspective exploration of memory – a return to past feelings, experiences, and associations.
“Each of us seeks freedom – we want to move forward, without constantly looking over our shoulder, to shape our own destiny without being distracted by memories at every turn”, Nowicka says. “Yet fate has a way of playing tricks on us, throwing obstacles in our path – sometimes in the form of a teacup in a café like the ones our grandmothers had, a familiar touch of crinkled bedding in a shopping mall, or even the return of low-rise jeans that haunt many of us”. In Ghosts of the Past, the artist reflects on how the past can quietly seep into our daily lives, sending coded, almost imperceptible signals that attempt to warp time and draw us into a sentimental journey through bygone years.
Nowicka’s style is marked by nostalgia and a contemplation of memory, with a sensitivity to the moments in which past and present intertwine. Her works prompt introspection – an invitation to pause and reflect on where we come from and where we are headed. She treats memories not as burdens but as opportunities to better understand ourselves, to glimpse our reflection even in something as unlikely as the lifeless stare of a long-forgotten childhood toy, a Furby, from which we may have long since averted our eyes.
Aleksandra Nowicka (b. 1997) holds a degree in Art History from the University of Warsaw and completed her MA in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2023. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Poland. Her works are held in many private collections, as well as the mBank art collection. Her graduation project, Spectrology, was selected for the Upcoming: Handle with Care 2023 exhibition, showcasing outstanding degree works from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.
Aleksandra Liput
Aleksandra Liput’s artistic practice centres on themes of spirituality and magical objects, drawing inspiration from ancient beliefs and folk tales. She is particularly interested in ideas connected to myth and utopia.
In Enchanting Eyes, the artist draws upon the folk belief in the so-called “evil eye”, a superstition once widespread across Polish lands. As Henryk Biegeleisen wrote, “(…) the evil eye brings misfortune to everything it gazes upon. If someone with such eyes looks at a beautiful child, the child quickly withers; if at a calf, it dies; if at a cottage, the family living there begins to quarrel (…)”. Enchanting Eyes explores the mechanisms of defence that give rise to superstitions surrounding illness. The red glass in the stained-glass panels symbolises the intensity of a gaze charged with the power of a curse. The work examines the thin line between genuine threat and irrational fear. As a medium that is both a physical barrier and a conduit for light, stained glass becomes an apt metaphor for superstition itself: meant to protect, yet often reinforcing exclusion and stigmatisation of those perceived as dangerous.
Aleksandra Liput (b. 1989) is a visual artist working across ceramics, textiles, and drawing to create sculptural objects and installations. She currently serves as an assistant in the Drawing Studio at the Faculty of Painting, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 2023, she earned her doctoral degree with the dissertation Today the Trees Outside the Window Looked Like Living Creatures on the Moon. Her works have been exhibited at institutions including the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, Labirynt Gallery in Lublin, and the Museum of Contemporary Art MOCAK in Kraków.
Jakub Słomkowski
Jakub Słomkowski’s work navigates between abstraction and symbolism, constructing a distinctive personal alphabet of meanings through signature colour transitions and a refined sensitivity to tonal nuance. Babel is a symbolic painting, a body of work rooted in the concept of apotropaic symbolism – an area of ongoing interest and exploration for the artist.
Słomkowski frequently draws on the ancient world to comment on the present. In his interpretation, Babel unfolds across multiple formal and philosophical layers, embedding “riddles” into the imagery. These are closely tied to his painting process – a dynamic oscillation of moods, incidents, and the artist’s intuitive ability to connect past and present, all of which animate the form and deepen the message. To fully grasp these riddles, one must adopt several methodological approaches: some readings require familiarity with other works in the series and the origins of their themes; others emerge from the simplest of associations.
Jakub Słomkowski (b. 1982) is a painter, illustrator, musician, and installation artist. He graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2007 and also studied at the Complutense University of Madrid. He is a co-founder of the band Andy Why, the improv duos Kubatwice Improvise and Sicarios Unidos, and the music project I AM SORRY DAVE. Słomkowski has exhibited widely, including at HOS Gallery and the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, as well as the Saatchi Gallery in London.
Courage Kpormorne Hunke
Courage Hunke is an artist whose practice engages with themes of consumer culture, beauty, and memory. Akosombo envisions the city as a living archive, rich with memory and identity. It features an image transfer of a beloved family photograph from a visit to Ghana’s Akosombo Dam, applied to a surface Hunke made by heat pressing paper and thin plastic into a fused material. Hunke describes his process as selecting “a fragment of text from repurposed plastic bags that show through the delicate layers of newly formed paper”. “This choice not only conveys a message of gratitude but also symbolises the interplay between disposable items and meaningful moments, seamlessly weaving together elements of consumer culture and environmental consciousness”, he adds.
This creative method echoes the dam’s 1960s legacy, blending national ambition with the challenges of displacement. The artwork’s textured surface captures the essence of that family moment while reflecting the dam’s broader impact, like industrialisation and community upheaval. The amalgamated material, both delicate and strong, symbolises the interplay of personal stories and urban evolution. Akosombo thus invites us to view cities as layered archives where intimate and collective histories meld into a lasting impression.
This artwork is being auctioned in memory of Edwin Owusu Ansah (1995-2024), Artist Manager of Artemartis. All proceeds will support the education of Edwin’s young brother, Russell.
Courage Kpormorne Hunke (b. 2000) is a Ghanaian artist who transforms everyday objects into artworks through an innovative process that fuses paper with reclaimed plastic bags.
His pieces reflect the transient nature of existence and serve as meditations on consumer choices and our collective environmental responsibility. In a world shaped by disposability, Hunke’s art calls on viewers to reconsider their habits, to recognise beauty in overlooked materials, and to absorb the lessons offered by the natural world. His works have been exhibited internationally in West Africa and Europe, including Phillips and I-54 in London, Septieme Gallery in Paris, Citronne Gallery in Athens and Affinity Gallery in Lagos. He is represented by the Ghanaian artist collective Artemartis.
Hubert Dolinkiewicz
Hubert Dolinkiewicz’s work seeks a visual form through which to convey human spiritual and existential experience. The exhibited painting belongs to the Metaphysical Landscape series, in which the sign serves as the protagonist of an enigmatic landscape and a conduit for expressing inner existential and spiritual states. The inspiration for this particular work was a split tree, which the artist places centrally within the composition, evoking the reverence of a sacred figure in devotional painting. The austere setting becomes a stage for contemplation, while the pulsating vitality captured within the tree’s fractured form is accentuated through the use of intense colour. Dolinkiewicz treats symbols in his work as fully fledged subjects, allowing them to become metaphors for the human condition.
Hubert Dolinkiewicz (b. 1998) is a visual artist. He graduated with distinction in 2023 under the mentorship of Professor Stanisław Baj from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He was awarded a scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for 2023 and placed 10th in the 2024 edition of Kompas Młodej Sztuki. Dolinkiewicz’s visual language channels a profound sense of introspection, drawing on the iconography of sacred art, surrealism, and late 20th-century abstraction. His inspiration can be found in a wide array of sources, including sacred art traditions, Japanese woodblock prints, and East Asian calligraphy. He is represented by Wallspace Gallery in Warsaw.
Martyna Borowiecka
Martyna Borowiecka merges reality with the realm of imagination, presenting her own vision of femininity in dreamlike, illusionistic paintings.
The Lucky Fish Scale was painted between 2022 and 2023 – a period marked by both geopolitical uncertainty and personal challenges for the artist. In this work, Martyna Borowiecka sought to imbue the painting with a magical function, a charm to dispel the world’s ills. Created around the time of the winter solstice and Christmas, the painting took on the role of a symbolic wish for prosperity in the year ahead. Drawing from the Polish tradition of placing a carp scale in one’s wallet for good fortune, Borowiecka presents a personal interpretation of the still life genre, depicting a fish leaping into a coin purse. Despite the presence of golden coins, the composition does not limit itself to material wellbeing. Instead, it evokes the emotional warmth and intimacy of familial traditions during the holiday season.
Borowiecka’s trademark wit and irony emerge at the painting’s centre – in the form of a crimson droplet falling from an empty goblet. As in her other works, in which cups, teacups, and perfume bottles symbolise femininity, particularly the uterus, here, too, the goblet serves as a metaphor for the female body. A dark perfume bottle inscribed with “Boys lie” becomes a cautionary totem, a warning directed from the artist to other women.
Martyna Borowiecka (b. 1989) is a painter and a graduate of the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. She earned her doctorate in 2019. Her solo and group exhibitions have been presented at the Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń (2024), the Municipal Gallery in Wrocław (2024), BWA Kielce (2019), the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2019), and Pamoja Goods in Kraków (2019). She participated in the 18th Painting Triennial in Kaunas (2024) and the 18th SURVIVAL Art Review (2020). She was an artist-in-residence at the Pienków Art Residency (2018), and is a two-time Grand Prix winner of the Przedwiośnie competition (2014, 2019), as well as the 7th Triennial of Still Life (2015), and the Lubelska Spring Biennale (2021).
Mariusz Szypura
Mariusz Szypura is a creator of audiovisual installations and the author of the Nonaptych Chopin Residue series. The hand-cutting of 81 unique vinyl records, containing deconstructed interpretations of Chopin’s compositions, recorded and produced by Szypura, took place during a recorded audio-visual performance at Bunkier Sztuki in Kraków.
The remnants (residue) used in the artwork were created through the precise removal of material fragments, treated as the negative imprint of the sound groove. This process became a distinct creative stage, transforming ephemeral traces of sound into a physical form that visualises musical essence beyond the traditional sound medium. The resulting image, composed of vinyl threads, pulses in rhythm with the act of deconstruction and reconstruction. The vinyl material, enhanced by light projections, reveals microscale details that form an abstract landscape of sonic traces. The texture, shaped through mechanical abrasion, resembles a fragmented musical score. Rooted in destruction, the entire work redefines the boundaries between visual and sonic expression.
Mariusz Szypura (b. 1972) is a multidisciplinary artist who has influenced Polish culture for over three decades as a composer, multi-instrumentalist, music producer, and designer. His primary musical project, Silver Rocket, features Szypura as composer, performer, and producer. He has collaborated with artists including Nosowska, Rojek, and Novika.
More recently, Szypura has expanded into the field of audiovisual installation. His first multimedia projects, combining his experience in design and sound, include the exhibition in:human at Warsaw’s Centre for Contemporary Art and êkhos at Lincoln Center in New York.
Artis Arundo Spotlight – TOP CHARITY Auction 2025
May 22 – June 8, 2025
Exhibition of the auction artworks takes place till June 24, 2025, at the Orangery of the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw.
Artists: Martyna Borowiecka, Paweł Czekański, Michał Cygan, Hubert Dolinkiewicz, Wojciech Ejsmondt, Dominik Jan Gralak, Courage Hunke, Kamil Kukla, Aleksandra Liput, Olga Mokrzycka-Grospierre, Aleksandra Nowicka, Kinga Nowak, Zuzanna Szary, Jakub Słomkowski, Helena Stiasny, Franciszek Szczepaniec, Mariusz Szypura, Katarzyna Wójcicka.
