interview

Due to the recent emergence of a certain popular TV series, many people acquired new fear – mycelium inoculating and spreading through our soft flesh. Martina Kocianova is a Slovak jewellery designer and contemporary artist/maker crafting fairy-tale pieces that are designed as extensions of the body. But don't worry, these 'shrooms are friendly.

Having grown up at an intersection of past industry and mountainous nature, the Budapest-based Ádám Horváth creates works of art that explore fragile, liminal sensibilities. His mystical visual creations carry the romanticist silver thread of returning to an omnipresent nature when technologies relentlessly transform yesterday into tomorrow. Enjoy his “ode to disappointment” today, along with an interview with Ádám and a curatorial text that sheds further light on his brushstrokes.

“I would really like to see a society where emotional value concurred economic value.” Swedish fashion designer Miranda Borg Blomquist kindly let us in on the building and creative processes behind her wearable sculptural accessory pieces in a little chat with SWARM Mag.

Amir Zand’s unique creative vision has attracted many names in the sci-fi culture industry, but today we present you with his personal playground. Enter Anomaly, Amir’s passion project where he is unconstrained by the requirements of clients like Disney, Netflix or Microsoft, and where he can fully delve into expressing his most intimate experiences and visions in visual form. You will find he has even found time to discuss some of the key aspects of his imagination in today’s exclusive interview – that is, if you manage to look away from his breathtaking artworks.

“We are in the middle of our evolutionary process, just as the toads or the squids. Our shape is temporary.” Matteo Gatti is an Italian artist with focus on unsettling objects and drawings teeming with futuristic and (yet) non-existent lifeforms. Indulge in the visuals and interview with Matteo below.

After years of black-and-white illustrations, Alfred Pietroni found his medium in 3D sculpture. His digital fashion collections now span dozens of looks that hark back to Y2K video game aesthetics while envisioning the future of dystopian fashion. Today, Alfred goes into his process and discusses Exile, his fashion brand in the making.

Sessions always involve a lot of laughter. I mean, it's ridiculous what I ask people to do.” DLLCOPE, a self-described “gatherer of bodies, brains, skin, and paint to make images and sounds”, is a Canadian-based artist creating raw diorama-inspired compositions of bodies, paint, and DIY props.

Czech lingerie designer Karolína Černá's signature product are “crotchlessky”, or, as the name suggests, custom made-to-order lace crotchless underwear. Unsatisfied with the quality and the lack of non-vulgar and tasteful aesthetics in this particular niche lingerie field, Karolína set out to change the game.

“The nudity is not sexual, really. But it is physical, it is tangible.” Marie Tomanova’s intimate photographic vision has launched her into the international spotlight. In today’s feature, Marie discusses the experiences and inspirations informing her unique work, perspectives and recent book.

Céline Marie, a German designer with French roots, set out on her artistic journey with one major goal – to empower and embolden. Her idiosyncratic, intricate, and dreamy lingerie brand, HERVÉ, is dedicated to perfection and expressed by intimate detail. In the interview below, Marie offers an insight into the brand's backstory, passion, and motivation.

Having moved from the rigid world of tattoo art, Polish artist Izabella Wolf aka Devils Claws found her freedom in illustration and ceramic painting. Her works carry an air of mythical alchemism in a tribute to animism, her ancestors, and the wise women hunted both in the past and today. Let this feature spellbind you through Izabella’s creations and insightful commentary.

In materializing her unique vision, Aoi Kotsuhiroi uses traditional Japanese sap lacquering methods as “layer after layer the color stratifies and intensifies, taking time, a time that registers to reveal infinite depths.” Answering in poetry and divulging only a glimpse of her creative process, the Paris-based contemporary artist’s feature transports us to an erotic sublimity.

The dreamy, fantasy-adjacent creations of French fashion designer Valeriane Venance invite the viewer into the parallel world of sage matriarchs, women often shunned throughout history. In an interview for SWARM Mag, Valeriane outlines what does “indépendantes de coeur” translate into for her, her inspiration journey, and how does one “sculpt a garment to perfectly marry someone's needs and desires.”

Polish artist Sebastian Janisiewicz explores in his 3D prints and art the realms and abs of hypermasculine furries and hairy bodies. Inspired by video games and online subcultures, with the perfect digitally-crafted pecs exhibited in physical spaces, his work transcends established notions of gender identity on a search for genuine connections with the beholder.

“Many are happy to open up, more than you’d expect, when treated with dignity.” Treat yourself to an interview with fashion designer Klara Marie Bliss, living and working between Prague and Antwerp, on choosing to pursue corsetry, approaching working with bodies, and the archetypes of feminine lingerie.

“I like to present [the collection] as a retrospective of the belongings of a woman who doesn’t exist.” Fashion designer Gabrielle Huguenot, based in Switzerland, talked to SWARM Mag about her designing processes, childhood influences, and, first and foremost, the mysterious Snake Woman, Gabrielle's long-time imaginary Femme Fatale, for whom she created the newest Artificial Flowers Also Need Water collection.

The Netherlands-based animator Hannah Frogs’ eclectic style taps into our collective memories of gentle hues and images. Breathing life into her scenes and characters, these in turn recall a childhood nostalgia with a contemporary touch. Her inspirations and creative processes are as dreamy as her artworks – enter Hannah’s fantasy world with us

In her works, the Finnish designer Jenny Hytönen designs around the motif of bare skin reflecting a bared, vulnerable soul. Among these also is the Cyborg Bride, a piece including a flashing heartbeat sensor embedded among tens of thousands of beads, a literal heart on one’s sleeve. Today, Jenny goes into her inspirations, motives and desires to shed more light on her artistic process.

“Real events and feelings pass along its corridors, but, reflected in the mirror surfaces, they are distorted beyond recognition” is how Ohii Katya, the Rome-based Ukrainian sculptor and performance artist describes the labyrinth of affects her creations invite into. Enter today’s feature – a fantasy suspended between eroticism and abjection, emanating the smell of latex and burnt sugar.

Czech jeweller and goldsmith Antonie Lecher talks to SWARM Mag about how to put an emphasis on sustainability around precious materials, why is water her inspiring element and explains the roots of the newest Nacre collection reminiscent of structures found on coral reefs.