The connection between fish and humans has been steadfast on the island of Hvar for centuries. Fish are not merely a resource or a means to an end. They are a call to action, an invitation to commune, a conversation starter, a community builder and, for many families, a means of survival. They are woven into the fabric of the island’s society as tightly as the nets that catch them. Yet as small fishing boats have gradually been overtaken by enormous cruise ships, the fish have been left behind. Crowds of people now swarm the sunniest island in the Adriatic. Fishermen have hung up their nets and exchanged them for carefully furnished terraces, visually striking selections of gourmet meals, ice cream franchises and the reassurance that tourists remain ever hungry and ever curious.
The starting point of the artist residency, which began in April 2025, was a simple premise: if fish could talk, what would they say? This question marked the beginning of Conversations with Fish, an artistic project developed by Croatian artist and filmmaker Karla Crnčević in collaboration with the Basque anarcho-culinary collective Cocina de Guerrilla, represented by Rubén Castillejo, a chef, artist and activist working for food sovereignty. Karla and Rubén joined the team of Jelsa Art Biennial for an on-site residency in June 2025, travelling from the Basque Country in a mobile cultural centre – a white van equipped with a kitchen, sound system, projection screen, mixer and microphones – which they occupied for the remainder of their stay.
This self-sustaining approach, which allows cultural and culinary events to be staged wherever they arrive, is central to Cocina de Guerrilla’s practice. It has enabled Rubén to consistently pursue the collective’s mission of framing food and cooking as artistic and activist practices. In parallel, Karla delved into archival research on human relationships with fisheries, examining their simultaneously symbiotic and exploitative nature. Together, they engaged fishermen and fisherwomen, restaurant owners, fishmongers and historians on the island through conversations and oral testimonies, focusing on the contemporary figure of the net-maker and the many roles required to keep pace with ever-growing tourism demands.
Through three public-space happenings in Jelsa and Hvar Town, Karla and Rubén invited locals, tourists and passers-by to take part in street-style interviews. Their only request was that answers be given from the perspective of a fish. By placing people metaphorically in the fish’s fins, responses varied widely. “How do you communicate?” (“By blowing bubbles.”) “Do you like humans?” (“I fear them.”) “What kind of fish do you like?” (“I like colourful fish, playful fish, but I don’t like fish that is fishy.”)
Following the conversations, audiences were invited to a food tasting featuring experimental recipes developed by Rubén, with fish as the central ingredient. The menu included lemon cocktails based on traditional fish stock, as well as ice cream with salty anchovies and watermelon rind topping. Much like the questions posed earlier, reactions were immediate: some visitors were delighted, others visibly repelled. The meals functioned as food for thought, encouraging reflection on the ways fish are often overlooked, even within their own home territory. Using archival material as a visual backdrop, Karla concluded the events with a poetry reading and a presentation of Croatian animated films addressing themes of fish and the sea.
These events condensed an entire tourist season into a single experience, offering conversation, entertainment and refreshment while subtly shifting expectations. They became spaces for reflecting on our relationship with the environment: how it shapes us, how much – or how little – respect it receives for all that it provides. The sea, a vast and turbulent home, deserves both reverence and fear, care and protection, all of which it is so often denied.
Cocina de Guerrilla is a collective that re-examines gastronomy, its knowledge, techniques and possibilities, with the aim of meeting nutritional needs while promoting food sovereignty as a human right. The kitchen functions as their primary tool for artistic creation, enabling them to explore the creative and political potential of food.
Karla Crnčević is a dramaturge and film practitioner whose work investigates the politics of image and sound across different formats and production conditions. Her video works and films have been shown and awarded at festivals nationally and internationally. She is a co-founder of the Unseen Festival, which focuses on the revitalisation of cinema spaces. She graduated in dramaturgy from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb and completed further training at the EQZE school in San Sebastián.
Bodies Are Pointy, Sharp and Sensitive
Many times one walks past or steps on a rock without giving it a second thought, despite the countless reflections prompted by the hundreds, thousands and millions of these quiet forms that compose the ground beneath our feet. Islands emerging from the sea, when seen from above, resemble pebbles rising from a foamy blue carpet. Everything is an object, a body, interacting with other bodies: giving and absorbing warmth, borrowing space, holding energy. In these interactions, hands become vessels of exchange, while the mind connects to a larger force in which sight and physical presence take centre stage.
Polish artist Laura Adel has explored the extended and symbiotic nature of contemporary realities long before beginning her residency research in April 2025. Across much of her practice, the boundaries between the physical and the virtual dissolve into a fluid continuum. For Jelsa Art Biennial, she worked with existing software alongside scanned and 3D-printed objects that respond to touch in real time, translating interaction into visual information on screen.
In the interactive installation Sensitive Bodies, created through the 3D scanning and printing of three stones collected on the shores of Hvar, visitors are invited to manipulate digital stone models using their physical, 3D-printed counterparts. Through this gesture, Adel reflects on the shifting relationship between technology and nature, no longer positioned as opposing forces but as elements that merge, inform and transform one another. Within this framework, her practice emphasises the importance of cultivating mutual respect and imaginative harmony between these domains. Nature offers grounding and restoration, while technology extends perception and enables experiences beyond bodily limitations.
Displayed in an old wine cellar, the work invited both children and adults to interact with the stones, triggering real-time projections on a large screen. The tactile experience of handling the printed stones, combined with their animated visualisations, narrates the geological histories and forces that shaped them, transforming each stone into a vessel of memory and a marker of the landscape. This immersive environment encourages heightened attentiveness to the natural world. By encountering the stones simultaneously as physical objects and digital extensions, the work prompts reflection on our evolving relationship to place and on the shifting interplay between natural formations and technological imagination.
Laura Adel (born 23 May 1994 in Gdańsk) is a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, where she also lectures at the Department of Media Art. Her work explores principles of perception and spatial experience through artistic practice in new media environments.
Curatorial text by Gabrijela Mamić