Celine Levitan. The Language of Pearls

Celine Levitan’s stitched paintings - embroidery and patchwork heavy with sequins and faux pearls - are Bunkier Sztuki’s show away from home: not in the gallery’s building on plac Szczepański, but in the Wyspiański Pavilion on plac Wszystkich Świętych. It is open every day from 9:00 to 19:00, Mondays included, until 31 October 2026.

Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery on the exhibition (the gallery’s own English text):

The Language of Pearls is an exhibition of works by Celine Levitan, in which sewing becomes a form of pictorial thinking. The artist consistently defines her works as paintings, even though they are produced from fabrics, embroidery, and patchwork appliqués, lavishly decorated with sequins, faux pearls, and plastic stones. The material serves no utilitarian purpose here. It becomes the fabric of the image: it allows for the construction of successive layers of representation, saturated with colour, light, and meaning, which, as the artist herself emphasises, she would be unable to achieve in the traditional medium of painting.

The works on display are created intuitively, without sketches or prior plans. Compositions emerge gradually, guided by the rhythm of sewing, gesture, and associations emerging during the creative process. Titles often emerge only at the end, when the images begin to reveal their own narrative. Snakes, roosters, tongues, pearls, eyes, and female figures create not so much a closed system of symbols as an emotional and intuitive visual language. All works are powerfully autobiographical - the artist treats them as records of her own experiences, emotions, fears, desires, and inner transformations.

What to expect

The show sits outside the gallery’s main building, in the Wyspiański Pavilion (plac Wszystkich Świętych 2), on the short walk between the Main Market Square and Wawel. According to an announcement on the City of Krakow’s official website, it is one of a series of projects that take Bunkier Sztuki’s programme out of its own galleries and into the city. The gallery does not say how many works are on display.

What you will see is stitched rather than painted: fabric, embroidery and patchwork appliqué, which the artist nonetheless insists on calling paintings. The same motifs keep coming back - snakes, roosters, tongues, pearls, eyes and female figures.

The gallery and its press material name two works:

• “Woman’s Puzzle / Dress-Up Doll” (2026) - a double-sided monidło in patchwork appliqué, 165 × 130 cm, designed so that you step into the role of the woman in the portrait.
• “The Birth of Pearls” (2025) - an embroidery measuring 50 × 40 cm, the image the gallery uses for the show on its website.

The curator is Delfina Jałowik. The show opened on 8 July 2026 at 18:00.

Context

Celine Levitan is the working name of Celina Kędziera, born in 1974, a painter, printmaker and maker of textile pictures. She graduated from the Faculty of Painting at Krakow’s Academy of Fine Arts, in the studio of the painter and professor Adam Brincken. She came to stitched paintings through years of working with fabric and embroidery on decorative and functional objects.

A monidło, the Polish form the largest named work refers to, is an enlarged photographic portrait retouched and tinted by hand, usually made from a wedding photograph. From the 19th century it was a cheaper alternative to a painted portrait in poorer homes, especially in the countryside. After the Second World War it fell out of fashion and came to be seen as kitsch.

The pavilion itself opened in 2007 for the 750th anniversary of Krakow’s town charter, designed by the architect Krzysztof Ingarden. It houses an InfoKraków city information point and three stained-glass windows made to Stanisław Wyspiański’s designs for Wawel Cathedral, which the cathedral authorities rejected at the time. They show St Stanislaus, Casimir the Great and Henry the Pious.

Tickets and time

• Hours: daily 9:00-19:00 (9 AM-7 PM), Monday to Sunday. These differ from the gallery’s main building on plac Szczepański (Tuesday to Sunday 11:00-19:00, closed Mondays), so this is the Bunkier show you can still see on a Monday or before 11:00.
• Tickets: the exhibition page gives no admission price, and the price list on the gallery’s “For visitors” page (11 PLN standard, 6 PLN reduced per exhibition) does not mention the pavilion. Before you go, ask the gallery’s ticket office: +48 668 808 352.
• How long: one artist, in a building that is first of all a city information point. Allow 20 minutes, or half an hour with the Wyspiański windows.
• Best for: anyone interested in textile art, embroidery and questions of female identity, and anyone walking down ulica Grodzka from the Market Square towards Wawel, since the pavilion is on the way.
• Skip if: you are after painting on canvas or a large show for a whole afternoon. For that, go to the main building, where three new exhibitions opened on 23 September.
• English on site: the gallery publishes the exhibition text in English on its website. It says nothing about English labels in the pavilion, and it has announced no tours of this show.

What the press says

Magazyn SZUM (6 Jul 2026, editorial team, “Na Dobry Początek” column): in its round-up of the week’s openings, a preview of the solo show, in which sewing is a form of painterly thinking for the artist, with the pearl of the title read as Jung’s symbol of transformation - link (Polish-language source).

krakow.pl (9 Jul 2026, the City of Krakow’s official website): a post-opening piece that places the show within the gallery’s strategy of showing contemporary art outside conventional exhibition spaces - link (Polish-language source).

krakow.pl (20 Jul 2026, the City of Krakow’s official website): a short notice with opening hours and free entry - link (Polish-language source).

Three pieces, all informational: one preview in the art press and two notices from the city. No critical review had been found by 23 September 2026.

Updates

• 23 Sep 2026 - page created; dates, hours, venue and curator checked against the Bunkier Sztuki website.

See also

• Kinga Nowak. A tropikal fiva uv regrejt - in Bunkier’s main building on plac Szczepański until 3 January 2027. A solo show by a painter and sculptor on the traces of colonialism in European and Polish culture.
• Mirella von Chrupek. Romance au chocolat - also in the main building, until 3 January 2027. Five scenes in display cases, built around cocoa and its aroma.
• Polish Design: Object Biographies / Designer Biographies - in the main building until 13 December 2026. The things contemporary designers surround themselves with every day, and what those things say about them.
• Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery - the gallery’s brutalist home on the other side of the Main Market Square; there every exhibition is ticketed separately, so do the sums before you go in.

Opening hours and current details are on the Bunkier Sztuki website .

Museum profile: Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery .