Iza Koczanowska – artist and researcher – Berlin / Amsterdam
︎
Iza Koczanowska. Unstable Territories. Field research, material experimentation and speculative storytelling.



































Outisde the Dream House 


Drawings on biomaterials
2026 - ongoing
Pijałka

2026
Sculpture prototypes

Referencing traditional Polish spa drinking vessels used in sanatoria and mineral water resorts, the prototype reimagines the cup as a communal object with multiple spouts for multispecies use.

Designed around a shared source of mineral water, the object reflects on collective rituals of healing, regeneration, and care. It proposes the sanatorium not as a space organised around individual treatment, but as an environment inhabited by multiple bodies gathering around extracted natural resources.

31°34′50″N 130°39′29″E 

Arcus Project
Research Residency 
Ibaraki, Japan
2026


VIDEO 2:29

Spatial scans, bioplastic made from hot spring water

and volcanic ash, interior scan models



Tracing animism through water, Japanese onsen cul-

ture reveals how stones marked with ropes signal the

presence of kami, while legends of wounded animals

healing in thermal pools continue to persist. Water is

not a backdrop but an active agent: volcanic, miner-

al-laden, coloured by iron or sulphur, and behaving

differently from anything that comes from a tap.

Across multiple onsen sites, LiDAR scanning was

attempted to capture spatial conditions. The scans

failed. Steam density was too great to resolve. That

failure became a method: incompleteness as a record

of material resistance.


From collected onsen water, volcanic ash, and hydro-

phone recordings, biomaterials were cast into interior

models built from deformed floor plans, partial recon-

structions of places dissolving under tourism pressure,

abandonment, or geological force. The research asks

what artistic practice can do when matter refuses to

be fully represented, and whether that refusal is itself

a form of knowledge.   

 
  

Pearl play


2026

Participatory sculptural object 

A found string of cultured pearls becomes the starting point for a participatory object that explores systems of circulation, exchange, and value. Referring to the cultivation of pearls and their movement through jewellery economies, the work transforms a familiar ornamental object into a playful mechanism of redistribution.


Through a simple game-like structure, pearls are set into motion, gathered, and passed along through a network of openings, creating a dynamic choreography of movement and encounter. 

Errancies

2025
Research through wandering and
trace-based font 
Costa del Sol


Grounded in feminist geography, the work

uses walking as a research method along

the densely populated beaches of Spain’s

Costa del Sol. Through GPS-mapping my

trajectories, I remap the beach through

bodily movement, examining how mass

tourism reshapes access to shared space.

Walking reveals compressed and inacces-

sible fragments of terrain, where bodies

interrupt the postcard image of the beach

and become part of its landscape.


The recorded trajectories are transformed

into forms corresponding to actual beach

fragments shaped by mass tourism. These

fragments are rescaled and materialised as

sculptural forms using biomaterials, while

their shapes are also developed into a

typographic alphabet. Together, they re-

cord changing conditions of access, bodily

presence, and spatial pressure.