Markéta Kosinová

The autumn chills creep in and we are bringing you an easygoing interview with Romania artist Ștefan Tănase. His object and sculptural works mostly consist of dark-humoured still lives and tongue-in-cheek snippets stemming from his lived experience – currently the one of a delivery driver.

Devaja is a joint project of two Spanish artists, Rocio Soria de Vaja and Ana Pez, based in Madrid. Their INFLAMMATORY earring collection was shot on models with styling reminiscent of characters from Mortal Combat cut with a Street Fighter aesthetic.

Marie Lukáčová has been unapologetically trailblazing the field of “proletarian or perhaps precariat rap”. Stemming from video art with surreal narration and plots, she eventually took her audiovisual art a step further.

The colour scheme and soft, rounded style of Jonathan Hoffboll put us on a sporty nostalgia train to the station 80s/90s. Remember all the basketball trading cards, funky casual T-shirt prints, over-the-top sneakers and all the Will Smith movies?

The Hungarian fashion designer collective Borbala are turning discarded sportswear into dresses, tops or overalls reminiscent of haute couture giant-slalom suits with dynamic cut patterns and outward-facing overlocked seams. We bring you an exclusive interview below.

Block-coloured and seemingly ominous illustrations by Marta Moya bring us unto a relatable universe of distractedness and the fidgety mind.

Enjoy an exclusive SWARM Mag interview with Gosia Machon, the painter of brutally honest and bare watercolour, acrylic and oil paintings, coming to life on pure instinct and depicting landscapes as nature merged with our psyche.

Working with upcycled fabrics and pieces of existing garments, fashion designer Karolína Čechová creates striking, fluid and flowing patchwork pieces of soothing earthy colours.

In a series of vibrant photographic prints and GIF files arranged in a collage fashion, artist Ewa Doroszenko draws attention to the thin line between using social media filters and other digital tweaks to our appearance as a form of entertainment, and (subconsciously) yielding to beauty standards feminine-presenting humans were socialized to value.

Each time the Czech independent record label Genot Centre lets out a new release, it's a little audiovisual feast. This time, it's Euglossine's Blue Marble Agony that will grace the world in just two days time, alongside artwork by Lenka Glisníková and video teaser by h5io6i54k.

Andrej Dúbravský uses the unforgiving and irreversible alla prima technique on raw canvas to produce his works. Not only the medium he uses but also the objects and subjects of some of his paintings convey atmosphere clouded in smoke, mist, mystery and vague arousal.

Scene: a flat. Setting: a pandemic lockdown. Cast: a group of friends, artists and flatmates. Time: timelesness. Enjoy an essay by Vít Jebavý outlining how one can push out routines assigned to various parts of our living premises.

Welcome to the gossamer world of playful glamour by Lilia, Victoria and the MOVE team, a group of fashion designers from Moldova, who use silk and delicate paintings as their storytelling medium.

Greek painter Fikos strives to resurrect, with his egg tempera pieces or acrylic murals, the dead tradition, philosophy and motifs of ancient Greek and Byzantine painting.

Beast of the East, Czech underwear and nightwear designer duo, brings a second installment of their series of retold fairytales. After Snow White comes a melancholic story of a young mermaid who is willing to give up her life in the sea to gain a human soul. Episode 2: The Little Mermaid.

“Tabula Rasa is faith. Tabula Rasa is.” TABULA RASA, an experimental theatrical troupe from Prague, breathes new life into scrap materials, old entities, thoughts hidden under the surface, and materials deemed useless and redundant.

An arachnologist turned full-time illustrator and teacher, Barcelona-based Emma Roulette guides us through her colour-by-the-numbers drawing style and ponders the meaning of borders and recent, newly-made rifts.

“Written for Swarm Mag in a bus from Prague to Chlumec nad Cidlinou. It was hot, too hot, and the couple behind me kept kicking my seat.” In his essay, Ondřej Trhoň views the act of writing as a way of repurposing and reinventing oneself.

“As if I could make the clothes a shelter, some dreamy, heaven-like space that one could just settle in.” Polish designer Pat Guzik and her namesake label strive to create pieces that are raw, playful, expressive and, most importantly, sustainably sourced and made.

Tekla Gedeon, a Budapest-based architect and speculative designer, presents “a parallel virtual world which performs environmental guardianship” where you can become an avatar forester and restore balance.