Joanna Kucia is a contemporary artist whose work bridges the tactile world of analog collage with the boundless possibilities of digital creation. Drawing inspiration from literature, music, and everyday fragments of memory, she builds poetic compositions that often feel suspended between dream and reality. Her imagery carries a unique balance―delicate yet bold, nostalgic yet modern―inviting viewers into intimate spaces of reflection and emotional resonance.

Her practice has been recognized internationally, with distinctions such as the International Prize Paris and the Leonardo da Vinci Prize in Milan, affirming the universal reach of her visual language. Whether exhibited in traditional galleries or presented in virtual spaces, Kucia’s collages remain deeply human―rooted in touch, rhythm, and the dialogue between past and present.

Your work merges analog and digital collage with a seamless fluidity. What this duality represent for you creatively – and emotionally?

Working with analog and digital feels like dancing between two worlds―one that smells of old book dust and another that breathes with the light of a screen. Combining these techniques is like working with two kinds of light. One is warm, diffused, and gently imperfect―it carries the past. The other is cooler and more precise―it shapes spaces that didn’t exist before.

Analog is the memory of hands – the touch of paper, the rustle you can only hear in silence. It’s physical presence and tangibility. Digital brings lightness and freedom – it allows intuitive exploration of new forms, building without boundaries. This dialogue between techniques reflects my inner rhythm – the need for matter and light, control and freedom.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m stitching the past to the present―like a woman sewing a dress from reclaimed fabrics. It’s a tender, emotional process of subtle gestures and conscious decisions. Though I work across two worlds, over time, they’ve learned to speak one language―my language.


There’s palpable introspective quality to your compositions. How much of your personal narrative do you consciously weave into the visual story?

I don’t consciously add introspection – it’s the space I create within. Before form appears, there is silence. In that silence, images, thoughts, and emotions gather –without meaning yet, just presence.

I don’t tell my personal history directly, but it flows through the work – through intuitive choices, tensions, and layers. Creating is a form of conversation with myself. I’m not looking for answers – I’m listening.

Each image records a fleeting state that passes but leaves a trace. If that trace resonates with someone else, it must have been true.

Your pieces often feel suspended between memory and dream. How do you approach constructing a surreal environment without losing narrative coherence?

Creating surreal compositions feels like building a space where everything can exist – even what seems out of place. I collect fragments that stay with me for different reasons: some lodge themselves in memory, others arise from emotions I can’t name.

Narrative coherence doesn’t have to come from logic or chronology. What matters is tension, rhythm, and inner balance – like in a dream, where everything intuitively arranges itself into a story, even if it defies understanding.

Each collage becomes a space―not just to look at but to inhabit. It is a temporary shelter for thoughts and emotions, a small, quiet map of inner landscapes.

Literature and music are key inspirations in your process. Can you share a recent book or song that directly shaped the specific piece?

Often, a single sentence, memory, or note holds me in time, opening new spaces for creation.

One of my works, “Chaos,” was born under the influence of Edward Stachura’s short story “I’ll Love Her by an Act of Will”. Stachura’s writing has accompanied me for years―like a kindred spirit in the literary world. His language is elusive, rushing like a river, saturated with intuition, pain, tenderness and anxiety. It carries more between the words than in the words themselves, and that unspoken space resonates with me the most.

“Chaos” does not retell his story; instead, it tries to capture an emotional state suspended between desire and fear, intimacy and incompletion. At the centre of the piece stands a woman―translucent, built of paper, with eyes budding like flowers. Her gaze is not direct; it seems to well up from within―through memory, time, and the tension hidden in inner silence. In Stachura’s story, a sentence has stayed with me for a long time: “The free bird is the greatest creature in this world.” That metaphor became the quiet core of the work.

Stachura doesn’t portray freedom as an escape but as a conscious choice―to remain faithful to oneself, to one’s feelings, to that single, fragile inner space that losing would mean losing oneself. I wanted “Chaos” to breathe that same truth: that the greatest strength and delicacy can coexist, that one can be free and faithful simultaneously. So I let my image glide like a silent bird through the realm of dream and memory―with unease and the hope that genuine can be saved. The second work, “Kind of Blue,” grew out of Miles Davis’s album of the same title. His music does not spin a story outright; it is like a landscape―blurred, open, full of places where one can pause or lose oneself. Davis paints the silence between notes as one paints the sky above the ocean―softly, without force, without fear. I wanted my image to breathe that same note.

There is a blue―the blue of the sky every season, the blue of the sea that asks no direction. A blue that doesn’t need to prove anything to exist. A quiet strength―flexible like wings in shifting winds.

At the centre of the collage appears a woman―Twiggy―her gaze bright as reflected light on water. One eye gazes out at the world while the other retreats into the shadow of a Warsaw tenement. Two blues, two memories. I come from Poland but have lived in the United Kingdom for years. I move between two worlds―one written in my roots, the other shaped by everyday experience. That quiet dialogue between what was and what is was exactly what I wanted to capture.

Living between places teaches you that home is not always the place you return to. Sometimes, it becomes something you carry―in scraps of conversation, window reflections, and the smell of rain on an unfamiliar street. Home ceases to be an address; it becomes a moment, a tender glance, a silence you recognise. Yet even where you stay, you are always a little different: a surname no one ever fully learns, a cameo in history you were not allowed to co-author.

And so you exist in-between: between light and shadow, between what you remember and what you build a new, between two blues―one written in your eyes, the other hidden in the sky above a Warsaw tenement. “Kind of Blue” taught me that you can also breathe in that in-between space. That is how my works emerge―like reflections of a blue sky within the soul.

Your aesthetic is grounded in vintage imaginary yet feels incredible contemporary. How do you navigate that balance between nostalgia and modern relevance?

I draw from the past because it holds something profoundly tangible. I love touching paper that has yellowed slightly with time and looking at photographs where the colours have softly faded. I enjoy searching through old archives and collecting books, postcards, and small objects that carry memories. I sense a presence behind every face and gesture―even if I don’t know the name.

When I place these fragments into my collages, I’m not just telling their stories but giving them new context. It’s not a return to the past but a quiet dialogue with it, like writing a new sentence in an alphabet that has already lived.

When I allow one to seep into the other, the balance between nostalgia and contemporaneity appears on its own. I create in the rhythm of today’s emotions but with attentiveness to the traces that came before. The past becomes not a memory but something very alive―a presence that endures.


With recognition in both physical exhibition and virtual platforms like the Metaverse, how do you see the role of digital space in the future of fine art?

For me, the digital space is another layer―like a transparent overlay on a painting. It doesn’t replace the physical but lets me see it from a different angle. My collages are rooted in materiality―old papers, photographs, textures―but I’m not afraid to carry them into the virtual world because I know the essence remains. If an image has its inner pulse, it will find its place―even where there are no walls.

Digital presence offers new forms of closeness―another way of sharing an image―not hung on a wall but present in someone’s gaze through a screen. I often receive messages from people who find their memories, moods, and emotions in my work. It’s extraordinary to meet someone through an image, even when space lies between us.

I believe the future of art lies in fluidity―the ability to be both here and there, in hand and the ether, without losing depth.

Your work has been described as both delicate and bold. How intentional is this tension – and does it reflect something about your own worldview?

I don’t create with contrast in mind, but it often appears on its own―as if to show that one can’t be complete without the other. My works are delicate because they are tender. They look through silence rather than through noise. But they are also bold―because they’re not afraid of what is fragile, suspended, or stirred.

That balance comes from my experience of femininity, which has never been one-dimensional. To me, femininity is the tension between strength and softness, sensitivity and firmness. It’s a constant stitching together of worlds that seem to contradict each other at first glance. And yet, they can exist together.
I create images that don’t impose but quietly stay. They don’t try to persuade but invite. Maybe that is part of my story―you can be gentle without giving up your voice.


When looking at your completed works, what kind of emotion or psychological dialogue are you hoping to initiate with the viewer?

I want an image not to close meaning but to open it. I don’t want to lead the viewer by the hand―I’d rather sit beside them and let them see what belongs only to them. Nothing is more powerful than when someone sees my work and recognizes themselves without saying a word.

I like to think that my works don’t tell a single story―they only begin one and then hand it over to whoever is looking. And perhaps that’s what matters most to me: an image inspires but does not impose. Silence is the feeling of something left unsaid that often speaks more than any message. It becomes a meeting place.

The International Prize Paris and the Leonardo Da Vinci Prize are significant honors. How do you accolades like these impact your practice, if it all?

Receiving these awards was a surprising moment for me―a signal that my work can resonate with people I’ve never met in places I never expected.

The International Art Award in Paris was profoundly moving. Paris has always felt close to me―for the way, art naturally weaves into everyday life, the way the city’s light reflects in ordinary places, and the presence of history that doesn’t dominate but quietly coexists with the present. Thanks to this award, I had the opportunity to participate in the Carrousel du Louvre – Art Shopping Expo. The Leonardo da Vinci Award, presented in Milan at the Museum of Science and Technology bearing his name, was more than a recognition―it felt like a conversation with an idea. Leonardo has always fascinated me for his imagination and vulnerability―the courage to admit his longings and imperfections. “Have you ever accomplished anything?” he once wrote, reminding us that creation is born not from pride but an endless need to search. His creative hunger and bravery in starting over are significant to me.

Both awards opened the door to many projects in France and Italy. Since then, the architecture of Italian cities, the light in courtyards, and the gestures of sculptures have started to seep into my work―like an echo etched into the texture of the image.

Have these recognitions changed anything? Not in the essence of the work―I still begin with silence, with the impulse that won’t let go. But something else has emerged: a quiet sense of responsibility, an awareness that every piece I create might cross languages and borders. That it might touch places I never even dreamed of. And that thought carries me forward―with greater humility and gratitude.

Looking ahead, what themes or mediums are calling to you now – and how do you envision the next evolution of your artistic voice?

My artistic exploration continues to evolve in two distinct directions. I actively explore new media―augmented and virtual reality―as tools for creating spaces that are not just viewed but deeply experienced. On the other hand, I feel a growing pull toward the material―paper, canvas, and the hand gesture. Mixed media has become a way of layering memory through touch, rhythm, and presence.

In the coming years, I want to deepen both of these paths. The technique that combines analogue sensitivity with digital environments remains the foundation of my artistic language. But I feel my voice shifting―becoming quieter, more focused, and more inward. It’s not a change in style but in tone.

I’m increasingly interested in the relationship between the individual and nature, especially in a highly digital, accelerated, and detached world from the physical and the present. I wonder how art can become not just something to look at but a space to simply be. I want my work to feel like a soft place―one where a person can pause, feel themselves again, and reconnect with a forgotten rhythm.

I see my path moving toward a balance―between technology and simplicity, between the glow of a screen and the roughness of paper, between what is new and what is deeply human.