Marya Nawrocka-Mierzwa is a graduate of the Faculty of Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and has been associated with the Museum of King Jan III’s Palace at Wilanów since 2003. She is passionate about issues related to the conservation and reconstruction of both tangible and intangible heritage, including singing, dance and the ephemeral art of ritual traditions. From early childhood, she was influenced by paintings and sculptures referred to as “naive”, as well as by their creators, whom she met while travelling around Poland with her parents, Bolesław and Lina Nawroccy. This is where her earliest visual and musical inspirations can be found. She uses her interests in folklore by conducting educational workshops. Every year, during the Royal Craft Festival, she leads workshops on Warsaw-area paper cutting – in the form that could have existed around the Wilanów estate.
Mariza Nawrocka (her artistic pseudonym) has been a student of Maria Siwcowa from Gałki Rusinowskie near Przysucha since 2012, one of the most outstanding contemporary folk singers, with whom she conducted, among other things, a series of singing workshops as part of a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Between 2013 and 2017, together with Maria Siwcowa and Kapela Niwińskich, she performed many times at festivals, rural and urban dance events, weddings, and also co-organised workshops and musical activities with children.
Mariza also conducts her own archival research. In 2018, her musical project Trimagine received Second Prize and the Czesław Niemen Special Award in the Nowa Tradycja competition.
Since the death of her Father, Bolesław Nawrocki (a lawyer, pianist, musicologist, academic teacher, patron of the arts, collector, field researcher and social activist) in 2008, she has continued to care for the family collection, organising and making the holdings available, preparing them and lending them for exhibitions organised in Poland and abroad.
