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.NeSpoon has been working at the intersection of urban art, ceramics, painting, and artivism since 2009. In her work, she addresses social and environmental issues such as deforestation, industrial animal farming, the impending global water crisis, the flood of advertising, disinformation and post-truth, or the traumas of war. In her expression, she seeks what unites rather than what divides; she prefers to say “yes” rather than “no.”

Her most famous project is “Harmony” – urban art inspired by lace-making. Using a limited color palette dominated by white, NeSpoon creates murals, illegal stencil graffiti, site-specific installations, and ceramic jewelry objects. She seeks fundamental codes of beauty and harmony that are readable all over the world. She does not shy away from decoration, treating it as the first and primary layer of reception of her works, which adorn public spaces in over 100 cities in 44 countries on 5 continents. The “Harmony” project combines the achievements of centuries-old traditional craftsmanship with modern means of expression, building an intergenerational bridge of understanding. The urban art of NeSpoon can be viewed from many perspectives. On the one hand, its sociological and anthropological aspects are visible. During her travels, the artist explores the five-hundred-year history of lace-making, studies available historical sources, visits museums, talks with still-active lace-makers, and observes the spread of lace patterns with the advancing process of world colonization over the past centuries.

NeSpoon analyzes the beginnings of lace-making in the context of even older intercultural connections. The first lace-making manuals, published in Venice in the mid-16th century, drew inspiration from already developed Islamic ornamentation, which in turn drew from even older Indian designs. This is why when NeSpoon adds color to her works, it is easy to associate them with Tibetan mandalas or Moroccan ceramics. This shows a deep, intercultural aesthetic bond based on so-called sacred geometry. Certain patterns, proportions, structures, and harmonies are instinctively recognized and readable worldwide. Symmetrical, regularly repeating patterns were considered manifestations of the mathematical perfection of the absolute and are also present all around us – in the skeletons of sea creatures, snowflakes, flower chalices, and frost patterns on windows. This is why they seem familiar and local everywhere.

In its early centuries, lace was a manifestation of power, wealth, and luxury, accessible only to the elite. A delicate collar or wedding veil represented the value of even years of work by a skilled lace-maker and fetched prices equivalent to several kilograms of gold. This is why, when prices fell with the Industrial Revolution, lace appeared in almost every bourgeois home as a symbol of wealth and good taste. The 19th and early 20th centuries were the era of aesthetic dominance of lace. Factories producing it were equipped with the most modern technology of the time and provided employment for hundreds of thousands of workers.

The feminine aspect of lace-making, probably the most female-dominated field of applied art, remains significant in NeSpoon’s work. Over the five centuries, it was practiced and developed almost exclusively by women. Female lace-making circles have offered their participants economic and emotional support for centuries. This aspect of lace-making is one of NeSpoon’s areas of interest. The feminine specificity of lace patterns is still relevant today: over 80% of those following NeSpoon’s work on social media identify as women, highlighting the strong cultural and emotional connection with this craft. Although NeSpoon’s art is not directly feminist, it is hard to deny its deeply feminine character.

NeSpoon also seeks answers to the question of the possibility of transferring street art to galleries without losing its authenticity and credibility. Her works explore the tension between the grassroots, spontaneous, and often anarchistic form of creativity that is street art and attempts to show these works in the formalized gallery space. Her “Illegals” series of paintings is simply a chronicle of illegal stencil graffiti, painted on city walls worldwide, its record and archive. NeSpoon recreates the rough textures of old walls on canvases and then stencils her designs, just as she does on the street.

Her ceramics represent a completely different approach to combining gallery art with street works. Each ceramic piece is created in two copies. One is stuck somewhere on the street, while the other becomes the heart of an exhibition object, named after the city where she left the twin piece. NeSpoon jokingly claims that both objects are quantumly entangled – if you listen closely, you can hear the sound of the distant city’s street.

Transferring a mural to a gallery is the most challenging, if not impossible. However, the era of social media allows for the condensed experience of muralism – both the reception of the work and the impression of its creation – in the form of short videos, called reels.

The exhibition is accompanied by a site-specific installation similar to those NeSpoon creates in public spaces. It was woven using lace collected from the inhabitants of Łódź. NeSpoon’s installations are often interpreted as a visual representation of the network of human connections and relationships.

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Borås Art Biennale LAYERS LOOPS LINES, curated by Daniel Terres for Boras Konstmuseum in Textile Fashion Center. All the laces were donated by the people of Borås, only one came from Poland made by Alina Krupa

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Two years ago I painted a mural in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. As always, my design was inspired by a local lace pattern. Everyone I spoke to, regardless of nationality or religion, recognized this pattern as familiar, well-known. It turned out that this pattern is a common cultural code for all people living in a multinational, multireligious Bosnia and Herzegovina, regardless of where they come from and how they identify themselves. Everyone associated it with family home and the good old days. Then I came up with the idea of an installation that symbolizes this deep, intercultural bond of all the local nationalities.

During my current stay in Mostar, local lace makers gave me dozens of laces that I wove into my installation. The work was created in a symbolic place, in the building of the university library, destroyed during the last war in the 1990s. More than 100,000 books were burned here.

I created the installation with the intention of peace, understanding and a successful common future for all the wonderful people who live here.

Many thanks to the entire @streetartsfestivalmostar team! Thank you to all lacemakers for the beautiful laces – @zekiradjonko Zekira, Milka, Senka, Dražena and Ifeta. One lace in the middle is a polish lace, made by Alina Krupa (Alina Oczko).

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These laces were created by Alinba Krupa.
Thank You!

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