Martina Kocianova
She/Her
Bratislava, Slovakia
I am a Slovak-born jeweller and artist working at the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and living materials such as mushroom mycelium. Trained at Central Saint Martins and through residencies at the Sarabande Foundation and Aokin School, I combine stone carving, engraving, and metalsmithing with experimental organic processes. My primary practice is jewellery-making, creating pieces inspired by the fungi kingdom. Alongside this, my artistic work explores the symbiotic relationship between the human body and fungi, blurring the boundaries of adornment. I am interested in how the function of jewellery shifts once it is upscaled and reimagined in space, using the language of jewellery to inform sculptural works in mycelium.
“I create contemporary jewelry and sculptural installations that merge traditional craftsmanship with living materials. Working with mushroom mycelium, alongside metal, gemstones, and carving techniques, I explore the fluid boundaries between the organic and the human-made. My practice draws on the symbolism of interconnectedness of fungi, regeneration, transformation, while reflecting on my own queer identity and relationship with the body. By scarring, carving, and shaping mycelium into new forms, I invite viewers to reconsider jewelry as more than ornament: a medium for storytelling, ecological awareness, and personal reflection. My work seeks to expand jewellery into a vital space of contemporary art, and question its function once it is taken away from the body and put into space.“
www.rodrigo-ormachea.com
How does your work relate to the theme of flourish(ing)?
“To flourish as an artist is to recognise the privilege of living from my practice. After years of going through the trenches, I now hold the freedom to create and share work that reflects my truth. This freedom is the most beautiful form of flourishing I have experienced. Through my art I want to connect to voices and people who share similar identities, ideologies, and desires to escape a binary, confined world.
My work grows from my queer identity, though queerness for me is never fixed. It is fluid, in constant transformation, like mycelium itself, adapting, regenerating, always becoming. At this moment, I find myself navigating a deeply personal tension: I am in a loving relationship with a man, my person. Being in a long-term relationship where I see a future often makes me question how my identity will evolve. How do I continue to connect with my queerness, even within a relationship that others may read as “straight”?
This is a question I will carry in the coming years, through community, reading, observing my own thoughts, and honouring the growth that has led me here. Gender doesn’t connect us, love does. Still, I wonder how to resist being reduced to the identity of my partner, as so often happens when bisexual or pan people are spoken of only through the lens of who they are with. This is not who I want to become. I believe flourishing means holding space for contradictions, refusing to erase parts of myself, and choosing growth in complexity rather than reduction.
More than a year ago, I went through a traumatic incident of sexual assault, one that deeply impacted my relationship to sexuality and intimacy. I choose to honour the fact that I am still here, that I have endured, and that I can see the strength in myself. Flourishing for me also means looking back at pain and recognising the resilience that has grown from it, feeling proud of how much I have survived and how I can still access happiness and gratefulness, and how much I continue to grow.
In my practice, I carve, scar, and sculpt mushroom mycelium, working with a process I call scarring over, in which the mycelium heals and regrows. This act of marking and regeneration mirrors my own lived experience: scars and growth, fragility and resilience, transformation and flourishing. For me, to flourish is to honour complexity, to live in joy while acknowledging struggle, to claim space in a world that longs to simplify us, and to show queerness not as limitation but as fertile ground for growth.”
"Ball and a chain", reishi mushrooms, reishi powder, and steel around 25x25 inch max, How does your creative practice allow you to flourish (grow, thrive, blossom)?
“My creative practice allows me to flourish by grounding me in both tradition and experimentation. Working with mushroom mycelium alongside precious metals and gemstones, I create jewellery and sculptural works that merge the organic with the human-made. Mycelium is alive, unpredictable, self-directed, always finding its own path. It teaches me that flourishing is not about permanence, but about adapting, regenerating, and transforming through connection.
The work I am presenting is still in process: a chain of asymmetrical mycelium spheres interspersed with live reishi mushrooms in full fruiting bodies, and pearls that will grow in number and irregularity, all attached to a larger orb. This piece explores the metaphor of the ball and chain. For me, it embodies the weight of trauma, the feeling of being bound to pain. By sculpting this work, I confront that heaviness while allowing mycelium’s regenerative growth to symbolise the possibility of healing. The chain becomes not only a mark of burden, but also a vessel for flourishing: pain turned into art, scars into texture, weight into resilience. I will also include reishi powder I have grown myself, sprinkled across the surface like dust or ash, a reminder of permanence and memory, how lived experience transforms once it is carried only as trace, like bones into ash.
Jewellery is my language of intimacy and connection. In this work, I expand that language into space: chains and pearls become sculpture, wearable yet oversized, adorning not just the body but the environment it inhabits. A pendant becomes a room, a gesture of adornment becomes a gathering.
Through this, I flourish not only as an individual but as part of a wider ecosystem. Like mycelium thriving in hidden networks, my practice is about growth through connection, resilience, and continual transformation, nourished by community, by love, and by the art I create.”
As a queer+ artist, what would you like to see and/or what do you need in order to flourish during this time?
“As a queer artist, flourishing for me is deeply connected to community. Last year, when I presented my work, I felt an immense sense of belonging and motivation a reminder of how rare and vital these spaces are for me. I don’t often have opportunities to focus on my more sculptural work, and being part of this exhibition would give me both the encouragement and the accountability to return to that side of my practice.
What I need in order to flourish is exactly this: to be surrounded by other queer makers whose experiences, identities, and struggles resonate with my own. In a world that often tries to compress us into binaries, being with others who resist that same confinement creates strength, joy, and creative energy. These networks are not only supportive, they are transformative, allowing me to take risks in my practice that I might not otherwise pursue in isolation.
This feels especially urgent in the current political climate. At the moment, I live mostly in Slovakia, where the government has shifted heavily to the right and hostility toward queer people and other minorities is increasingly visible. In such an environment, where erasure and hate are commonplace, spaces like this exhibition are not just about artistic growth but about survival and solidarity.
To flourish now means to be part of a community that uplifts, challenges, and protects. It means having the space to create without fear, and to make work that speaks back to the structures trying to silence us. For me, being part of this group would mean more than just an opportunity to exhibit; it would be a way to stay connected, to grow, and to remind myself and others that even in hostile climates, queer creativity continues to thrive.”
Anything else you would like to share about this work? This can be an important part of the process, sourcing materials, or research.
“I am still in the process of finishing this work, and I apologise that it is not yet complete. It is made from reishi mushroom mycelium, reishi mushrooms, reishi powder, and steel. I truly hope that, even though it is unfinished at this stage, you will consider giving me the opportunity to exhibit it. I promise the final result will carry the same strength and presence as my last piece, and will stand as a continuation of that work a necklace I showcased last year, while exploring new shapes, techniques, and concepts.”
[queerphoria]v4 @ ECU Symposium