Hanna Bialas

Echo the Spirit reimagines sacred art through contemporary, collaborative practices. Rooted in the language of religious ritual and ornamentation, the project merges sound, scent, textiles, and handcrafted objects—each created in dialogue with artists across disciplines—to form an immersive, multisensory installation.

Rather than reproducing traditional sacred forms, Echo the Spirit offers a space for reflection where spiritual resonance emerges through material presence and collective making. Here, post-traditional gestures are reinterpreted in raw, contemporary materials, inviting new ways of engaging with the sacred outside institutional frameworks.

The work is grounded in field research conducted in Polish churches, multidisciplinary collaboration, and the experimental process of scent creation. At its heart is a sculptural metal table that functions as a resonance box, embedded with stereo contact speakers. This transforms the surface into a sounding body—evoking the physicality of liturgical sound while speaking in a secular, sculptural language. The result is a space where meaning unfolds not through doctrine, but through shared experience, sensory connection, and material dialogue.

Collaboration as Working Method

At the core of Echo the Spirit lies the idea of collaboration not simply as a mode of production, but as a way of knowing — a research method grounded in co-creation, material dialogue, and mutual listening. The project unfolds through processes of shared making, conversation, and material exchange — treating the act of working with others as a site of inquiry into spiritual practice, collective memory, and symbolic language.

By centering collaboration as a method of research, the project resists singular authorship. It unfolds as a constellation — a layered, living archive shaped b”y multiple hands, voices, and sensibilities. In this way, Echo the Spirit does not merely reflect on spiritual form; it becomes a ritual of making in its own right.