"Uvula" is a performance by Anna Nowicka, commissioned by Zachęta – National Gallery of Art as a response to Piotr Uklański's sculpture "Untitled (Wide Open)". In her work, the artist explores how to survive moments of despair and turns to dreams as a remedy for a hopeless future. The title "Uvula" comes from the Latin word for the fleshy projection hanging from the soft palate. In this context, it becomes a physical invitation to create life.

Since 2010, Anna Nowicka has introduced dreaming techniques into the performing arts. These are various methods of working with the experience of dreams – conscious or unconscious – and using it as a creative tool. The artist works with dreams and embodied imagination, exploring the choreography of imagination and the relationships between dreaming and dancing bodies. She develops a poetic narrative, combining internal states, characters, flickering gestures, formal dances, and atmospheric landscapes. Like in a dream, all these forms of being emerge from embodied experience and dissolve into a space of possibilities.

A choreographer and dancer based in Berlin and Brandenburg, working with dreams and embodied imagination. A graduate of the Salzburger Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD), she earned a Master's degree in Choreography from HfS Ernst-Busch / HZT in Berlin and a Master's degree in Psychology from the University of Warsaw. She defended her practice-based doctorate titled "Embodied Attention as a Foundation for Stage Presence" at the Film School in Łódź.

Since 2010, she has been introducing dreaming techniques into the performing arts, teaching work with dreams and imagination at the International Institute for Dreaming and Imagery®, where she also directs the Dream Your World® Kids program. She is a certified Saphire® practice teacher.

Anna Nowicka