Bright Wings, Silent Waves:
Expression of resilience

Two artists transform natural materials into provocative statements of identity and survival

September 7, 2026 • Sponsored

Galerie Noël Guyomarc’h presents Bright Wings, Silent Waves, a two-person exhibition featuring contemporary jewellery artists Märta Mattsson and Carina Shoshtary. Running from September 12 to October 31, 2026, the exhibition brings together striking works that draw on the natural world to consider visibility, resilience, vulnerability and protection.

For both artists, jewellery is more than adornment. Their pieces use organic forms and materials to reflect on larger human concerns, including the courage to be seen, the need for shelter and the delicate balance between strength and fragility.

Märta Mattsson: Visibility as a Statement

Swedish artist Märta Mattsson’s collection, Glow Against the Dark, celebrates the sometimes-risky act of standing out. Her exuberant, brightly coloured works incorporate beetles and cicada wings, transforming insects into symbols of people and communities who resist silence in the face of discrimination, repression or violence.

Each piece is finely crafted and visually arresting, but also carries a quiet political charge: an ornament that refuses to go unnoticed.

Rather than relying on camouflage—the protective strategy of disappearing into one’s surroundings—Mattsson’s jewellery embraces conspicuousness. The works suggest that asserting one’s identity or speaking openly can be an act of courage, particularly in a time shaped by conflict, persecution and threats to human rights.

Carina Shoshtary: The Poetry of Protection

German-Iranian artist Carina Shoshtary explores protection from another perspective in her series Forms of Holding. Her work begins with materials marked by their own natural histories: water-worn stones, empty snail shells, seashells, wood and paper.

From these modest elements, Shoshtary develops sculptural structures that resemble shelters, vessels, armour or protective coverings. Yet these forms are not rigid or impenetrable. They reveal an underlying tenderness and vulnerability, suggesting that strength is not necessarily about hardness or isolation.

Using a 3D pen in imaginative and unconventional ways, Shoshtary creates delicate, intricate surfaces that invite close looking. Her jewellery and small sculptural objects evoke nature’s adaptive intelligence, where survival often depends on flexibility, transformation, and responsiveness rather than force.

About the Artists

Born in Stockholm in 1982, Märta Mattsson studied jewellery at the HDK School of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg before pursuing further training at London’s Royal College of Art, Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelry in Tokyo and the Rhode Island School of Design. Major museum collections include the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and the Schmuckmuseum in Pforzheim.

Carina Shoshtary is a German-Iranian contemporary jewellery artist based near Munich. She studied under Professor Otto Künzli at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. Her work is part of international collections, including those of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Shoshtary received the Bavarian State Prize for Emerging Designers in 2012 and the Munich City Art Prize in 2020.