Presentation of “The Próżna Project.” A Meeting with Krystyna Piotrowska and Katarzyna Krakowiak

 

Since 2004, the Jewish Culture Festival, created and organized by Gołda Tencer, has been held annually in the area around Grzybowski Square and Próżna Street under the slogan “Singer’s Warsaw.” The festival serves as a reminder of the Jewish community that once lived, worked, and created its own culture here, while also contributing to Polish culture. The festival attracts huge crowds of Warsaw residents who attend concerts, exhibitions, theater performances, and author meet-and-greets.

 

Próżna Street is actually the only small street in the center of Warsaw to have survived the destruction of the ghetto. Its condition in 2005, when art installations were first created there—a state of near-total ruin—served as a poignant monument in itself to the annihilation of the community that once lived there, but also to the ongoing process of erasing memory.

This dramatic tension within the urban space served as the inspiration for the artistic project “Projekt Próżna.” Krystyna Piotrowska was the project’s initiator and curator. The aim of the project was to show how contemporary art addresses the issues evoked by Próżna Street: Polish-Jewish individual and collective memory, shared history, the problem of anti-Semitism and intolerance, xenophobia, as well as attitudes toward the site and buildings where the exhibition took place—which, in their state of progressive ruin, stood as a testament to German war crimes and postwar indifference. Today, some of the buildings where the exhibitions took place have been meticulously restored.

The “Próżna Project” exhibitions took place between 2005 and 2012. Artists from Poland and abroad participated in them:

Krystiana Robb-Narbutt, Krystyna Piotrowska, Nelli Agassi, Rafał Jakubowicz, Kasia Krakowiak, Ewa Kuryluk, Piotr Lachmann, Janusz Marciniak, Waldemar Petryk, Joanna Rajkowska, Łukasz Szalankiewicz, Artur Żmijewski, Mirosław Bałka, Adina Bar-On, Izabella Gustowska, Rafał Jakubowicz, Elżbieta Janicka, Jarosław Kozakiewicz, Ifat Lajst, Haim Maor, Franciszek Orłowski, Maciej Ożóg, Anna Płotnicka, Tomasz Struk, Jacek Adamas, Inga Fonar Cocos, Wiktor Gutt, Andrzej Kokosza, Zygmunt Piotrowski, Aleksandra Polisiewicz, Akademia Ruchu, Jadwiga Sawicka, Tomasz Tatarczyk, Hubert Czerepok, Olga Stanisławska,  Oskar Dawicki, Daniela Deutelbaum, Wojciech Doroszuk, Ronen Eidelman, Zuzanna Janin, Ryszard Kaczeczka, Katarzyna Podgórska-Glonti, Jan Rusiński, Stanisław Wójcik, Ewa Stawecka, Waldemar Tatarczuk, Wojciech Wilczyk, Adam Adach, Janusz Byszewski, Jan Brzuszek, Ola Cieślak, Aleksandra Czerniawska, Paweł Łoziński, Ivo Krankowski, Barbara Szymczak, Anna Baumgart, Sharon Bereket, Lesław Dobrucki, Edward Dwurnik, Paweł Grześ, Małgorzata Gurowska, Joanna Helander, Paweł Jóźwiak-Rodan, Anna Konik, Mariusz Libel, Jarosław Modzelewski, Dorota Nieznalska, Jean Gabriel Periot, Konrad Pustoła, Wojtek Pustoła, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Eric Scott, Marek Sobczyk, Paweł Susid, Joanna Turowicz, Piotr Wysocki, Szu, szu, Piotr Kopik, Karol Radziszewski, Ivo Nikic;