Františka Blažková

Ema Prosová's work doesn't announce itself loudly. Her drawings and paintings on silk operate in a register that's contemplative, layered, almost whispered: figures emerging from lychee fruits, hospital rooms floating in eerie space, architectural fragments mingling with natural forms. The work comes from years spent moving between cultures and techniques, learning lacquer painting in Vietnam, silk painting in Indonesia, living in Tokyo, and now finishing her degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

In my last year’s review, I wrote that some part of me wished to keep PAF jealously to myself. Either that wish has not been intercepted in the ether or has been twisted completely because the 2025 edition of PAF, Festival of Film Animation and Contemporary Art in Olomouc, Czechia, was bursting at the seams; again. However, it’s one of the Czech festivals that deserves to be sold out and a bit cramped, and I’ll tell you why.

Between November 14 and 16, 2025, the international and multidisciplinary FASHIONCLASH Festival once again descended upon Maastricht, the Netherlands. SWARM MAG’s co-founder, Kateřina, was kindly invited to be a member of the jury awarding the best fashion film at the festival’s 17th edition. We also dispatched the other co-founder, Markéta, on a little delegation to accompany her and glean the strongest currents and tendencies in contemporary young fashion design and performance art. Together, they now present their highlights from the three-day event.

Georgian designer Lado Bokuchava, the founder of the eponymous fashion label, describes his upcoming Spring/Summer 2026 collection as “exploring the contrast between sophistication and unease”, among other things. In the interview with Lado, we went over finding femininity in unusual things, the timeless appeal of horror cinema, and the vision he wants to bring to our shared fashion ecosystem.

“The idea is that we are not powerless and we refuse to be at the mercy of a system that hates us – find the others!” Horde, a new intriguing music project centred around Icelander Palli Banine, a multimedia artist and musician, recently released the debut single from their upcoming album, ‘Taking Reality by Surprise’. In the exclusive and extensive interview, Palli reveals the collective roots of Horde, the personal struggles of being “beached” on life’s shores and finding hope and deep affection regardless, and so much more than can fit into a single opening paragraph. We invite you to take your time with this genuine, sans-filter, and raw reflection of one’s life intertwined with art.

After several years of publishing, researching, reaching out, celebrating, checking in, bonding, and connection-making, our archives have now grown vast, deep, and bountiful. Therefore, for our upcoming theme, COLLECTIVE CURRENTS, we have elected to do a sort of look-back and look-in. We welcome you among friends and kin, collaborators and muses, admirers and admired. Accompanying artwork by Ekaterina Skvortsova-Kowalski.

Brace yourselves, the cultural highlight of the Prague autumn season is on. The iconic and boundary-smashing Lunchmeat Festival just launched in Prague and, as with every edition, we plan to savour everything it has to offer – and invite you along for the ride. The festival’s entire programming runs between September 22 and 28.

Giusy Amoroso, also known as Marigoldff, is an Italian artist currently living and working in Berlin. Her singular work encompasses immersive media, 3D sculpting and animation, VR, and XR, and her creations feel like creatures that would be right at home in the Primordial Soup Hypothesis. Enjoy the extensive interview with the artist below, where we talk about shifting meanings, deep sea fascination, sculpting hidden reality, and “the beauty in the unfamiliar”.

Blue gold is a mystical metal; it could be everything that’s fleetingly shimmering, seducing, gently luring, glinting under the caustic light reflections of water surfaces. Another in-house editorial by house SWARM MAG will drag you down to cobalt depths only to discover Hades’ and Persephone’s guest house that you’ll never want to leave. Shot by Ondřej Szollos.

If you were to guess that the self-described “esoteric designer”, Stjorn Revali, behind the label Storrveldi, was profoundly influenced by Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates, you would be right. Her garments are intricately made, sprinkled with iconographic imagery and symbolism, heavy cotton lace, and Eastern European nostalgia. With the designer, we talked about the right to demand authenticity, separating the want from the need, imbuing photoshoots with storytelling, and more.

“[My] pieces aren't about hiding the body; they’re about making the internal cosmic.” Fashion designer Layla Dian Jin’s generous, sometimes even sculptural silhouettes feature striking elements covered in gold foil against dark fabric, and browsing them feels like stumbling upon scattered golden nuggets in the dark sand of a cold stream. The designer sat down with us to talk perspective shifts, the silence of empty spaces, micro and macro scales, and more.

Czech photographer Stanislav Palát is the definition of a one-man creative army. In the true spirit of “if it doesn’t exist, make it yourself”, he handles his own set design, lighting, makeup, 3D modelling, accessories, grading, and an array of other skills. The result is photographs with a touch of “Neo-Romantism”, fantasy, and exciting imaginary worlds, straddling the line between a fairytale and a fever dream. Enjoy the interview with the artist below.

“Interestingly, when I sing in Bulgarian, I also sound less queer than in English.” We were lucky enough to get ahold of one of the most idiosyncratic and eye-catching acts the Slovak 2025 Pohoda Festival has to offer, just a day before the event kicked off: Bulgarian choreographer, performer, and singer-songwriter Ivo Dimchev. His enthusiastic fandom knows him for a wild and vivid mixture of folklore, catchy pop, cabaret, and opera – and this year’s Pohoda should expect nothing less. With Ivo, we talked “fame”, multudisciplinarity, inspiration, queerness, and questions that haven’t been asked yet.

“At the mountain’s cold peak, there is no wasted movement, and nothing without its shadow.” Within only a year of two shows — one at PAF film festival, Ostrava, one at CTM, Berlin — Swiss adventurous music tastemakers Danse Noire do the good thing early by releasing Theo Alexander & Qow’s collaborative performance, ‘So Afraid To Show I Care’. We are elated to welcome a first-time guest writer, Prague-based Freddie Hudson, who penned a sweeping and suggestive review of the masterfully concocted album for SWARM MAG.

“How many times are gaps filled in a narrative to paint a specific picture?” asks Berlin-based fashion designer Elodie Carstensen regarding semi-mythical historical figures, whose stories have been told by all but themselves. In the interview with the designer, we discuss Jeanne d’Arc, marrying golden statues, and creating all-powerful beings out of the women wearing her clothes.

Is this a bombastic, ornate, and slightly disturbing version of a foodie heaven? We’ve suspended our freshest editorial in a peculiar type of timelessnes, which is both nostalgic and futuristic, and references the era when food styling was less homogenous and more unhinged. Enjoy a new collab between SWARM MAG, the award-winning photographer duo shotby.us, and Bláznivé bruschetty, an ingenious trio of food designers creating eye-catching and vibrant edible installations.

On her unorthodox journey from pathology to fashion design, Sumeyya Donmez arrived at the preferred creative tool of expression: the time-intensive and unpredictable process of salt crystallisation. Reminiscent of clothes swept into the ocean at high tide, Sumeyya’s collections sit somewhere between a garment and a sculpture. Read more about the symbolism of salt, savouring slowness and waiting, and how actually wearing the clothes sometimes isn’t the point in the in-depth interview with the designer.

Under the inspired hands of Czech jewellery maker Tereza Otáhalíková, golden foliage creeps, twists, turns, and blooms, adorning hands, necks, ears, hairdos, and clothes. In the interview with the craftswoman, she talks the processes behind her dainty floral and organic shapes, how a piece gains depth and meaning through placement and context, researching a distinctive style, and more.

“Imperfection feels authentic, touching, and full of history.” Polish fashion designer Karolina Pieniążek toys with the semantics, definition, and perception of “ugliness”. Her garments are sometimes adorned with false teeth or locks of hair, and a replica of a two-headed lamb serves as an accessory. Far from anyhow gory and macabre, though, her looks carry an enchanted and ethereal air, rooted in memories and oneiromancy. Enjoy the interview with the designer below.

“Woman portrayed as something unreal and unnerving is still very common.” The moodboards of Zuzanna Kordiukiewicz, a Polish fashion designer and jewellery maker, are filled with uncanny and eerie textures and shapes. The collection to which they gave birth, Chimera, is inspired by the fever dreams and rapturous visions of surrealism, often portraying female figures severely distorted and hybridised with other lifeforms. We invite you into her creative process.