"Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue"
Opening of Joanna Rajowska's Work's Archive

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    Joanna Rajkowska "Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue", photo by Bartosz Stawiarski

On 17 October 2014 the documentation of Joanna Rajkowska’s work entitled “Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue” will be made available through the Artists’ Archives website of the Museum of Modern Art.

The work was created in December 2002 as a short-term public space project (the palm was supposed to remain in place for a year). Although separated from its primary artistic assumption, the project has remained there ever since and taken root in Warsaw's landscape.

The archival documentation of “Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue” not only aims at presenting visual contexts of the palm, but also at telling the entire story – from the dawning of the concept during Joanna Rajkowska's trip to Israel in 2001, through difficulties and lack of understanding demonstrated by city authorities, to various sorts of logistic problems (the palm was manufactured in California and shipped to Warsaw in parts). Another division of the archive presents political actions, happenings, performances and grassroots social initiatives Joanna Rajkowska’s work has been the axis and catalyst of.

The palm still returns in various discussions concerning the public life and working out appropriate policies for installing works of art in the public space. In the context of the sixth edition of Warsaw Under Construction festival, the focal point of which is the cooperation between the city and artists, the palm incurs additional meaning – it becomes a cornerstone for new ways of perceiving art in the public space.

Ten years ago the discussion was based on pure aversion towards “otherness” that destroyed “traditional values” represented by monumental artefacts without any trace in the social awareness. Now it is being transformed into a discussion on the arrangement of public space in accord with constantly changing and ever more explicitly articulated needs of residents.

Joanna Rajkowska (born 1968) - one of the most important and widely discussed Polish visual artists. She makes movies, installations and actions; with her works she invades the public space to discuss and reconsider place-related traumas that are determined by human behaviour. She currently lives in London.
 

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