About

Linka Nowell is an artist and researcher working with material culture, archive and place through a material-led lens of enquiry.

Installation, sculpture, jewellery, photography, film and text navigate themes of human and more than human migration, displacement, value, border and belonging.

Auto-ethnography, object-based research, walking and prolonged witness operate as methods, through which systems of measurement, control and space are explored.

Her family history of forced wartime displacement from Poland to Siberia, East Africa and eventual resettlement in the UK informs her practice’s sustained engagement with diaspora and refugee communities. Having personally lived and worked across four continents further grounds a commitment to examining how identity is negotiated.

Environmental and material considerations are central to her work. Favouring re-use and carefully sourced materials, she works with found matter, inherited objects and site-responsive elements, foregrounding the social and ecological conditions through which materials circulate, accumulate value and carry displacement.

A classically trained jeweller, she combines making with critical research. Her education spans fine and applied art, material culture and critical theory, with postgraduate master’s degrees from the Royal College of Art and City & Guilds of London Art School, alongside undergraduate study in cultural studies and media communication at Bath Spa University and art history at the University of Oxford. She is currently undertaking a practice-led PhD at Falmouth University, where her research investigates dress, adornment and diasporic identity through archival research and creative practice.

Linka, short for Karolinka was the name she grew up using in both family and diasporic community circles, growing up in the UK during the 1980s, when Poland remained geographically and politically distant to many, Caroline, the English parallel, was also used. Both names were used interchangeably, shifting with context and community. Gruszewska and Toporowska are maternal surnames, Nowell is her maiden name. Following her father’s passing, it took on renewed significance. Also known as Caroline L.A. Wheeler [CLAW], with research engaging questions of identity and belonging, returning to Linka Nowell marks reclamation and anchor within the ongoing negotiation of self.