Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue
| Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue | |
|---|---|
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| Year | 12 December 2002 |
| Location | Warsaw, Poland |
| Coordinates | 52°13′54″N 21°01′15″E / 52.2317°N 21.0208°E |
Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue[1] (in Polish: "Pozdrowienia z Alej Jerozolimskich", literally "Greetings from Jerusalem Avenues") is a site-specific artwork in the form of a life-size artificial date palm. It was designed by Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska, and is located on the Charles de Gaulle Roundabout (Rondo gen. Charles’a de Gaulle’a), where Aleje Jerozolimskie intersects with Nowy Swiat street in the Polish capital of Warsaw. It was erected on December 12, 2002.
The work was intended by Rajkowska to draw attention to "the absence of the Jewish community in Poland" by highlighting and challenging "the invisibility of the street’s name."[2] The project was thus intended as a social experiment[3], an anti-monument that metaphorically brings the “vanished Jews back into the landscape of contemporary Poland”.[4]
Inspiration
The palm tree was inspired by Joanna Rajkowska's and fellow artist Artur Żmijewski's visit to Israel in 2001 during the Second Intifada. During their stay in Jerusalem, they witnessed distant explosions, the sound of Israeli helicopters over Bethlehem and Rajkowska provoked an incident in the Orthodox district of Mea Sharim when she lay down across a pavement and only stood up when she was about to be hit by an enraged Hassidic Jew.[5] These experiences left Rajkowska with “an omnipresent sense of fear and powerlessness”[6] and a “profound sense of incomprehension.”[7]
Upon her return to Warsaw, Rajkowska researched the history of Jerusalem Avenue in Warsaw and discovered that the street was named after an 18th-century Jewish settlement which existed for two years before it was dismantled by a group of merchants and craftsmen, jealous of the settlement’s economic prosperity.[8] The settlement was called New Jerusalem and was established at present day Plac Zawiszy (Zawisza Square), then on the outskirts of Warsaw.[9] Rajkowska was also impacted by a postcard found by Żmijewski in the Old Town in Yerushalayim, which featured a bare hill, a single palm tree and the words “Greetings from Hebron”. To her, the postcard looked as if it had been printed in Poland in the 1980s.[10]
These connections, together with the ongoing Israeli aggression in occupied Palestine, highlighted for Rajkowska the historical and affective links between Jerusalem and Warsaw. They also produced a sense of profound anxiety linked to Rajkowska’s family history, which included her father and grandmother’s escape from a train bound for Auschwitz. Back in Warsaw, Rajkowska started to feel the acute void left by the Holocaust and experienced “a short circuit, [as if] the frames from Warsaw and Jerusalem overlapped.”[11] Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue was therefore created both as a result of the trip to Israel and Rajkowska’s mourning over the genocide that had taken place in her country. The project is hence a comment on Polish-Jewish history and an expression of a transgenerational trauma, which tragically connects Poland and Israel. Before the Second World War, 30% of Warsaw's population was Jewish (about 370,000 people)[12] in comparison to the current estimated population of 0.125% (less than 2,000 people).[13]
The initial concept for the project emerged when, after their return to Warsaw, Żmijewski and Rajkowska were writing a text about the situation in Israel and no conclusion seemed obvious. Struggling with expressing herself in textual form, Rajkowska suddenly had an idea of how to engage with the topic as an artist. She envisaged putting up an espalier of palm trees along Jerusalem Avenue, a street she knew very well. In her own words, Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue started as “a caprice of imagination in the form of a question: what would it be like if Jerusalem Avenue in Warsaw was suddenly planted with palm trees, like the streets of Jerusalem?”[14] Unable to carry out a project on such a scale, Rajkowska opted for a singular tree.
The designer treats her artistic construction as Leftist.[15]
Location
The location of Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue is topographically, historically, politically and socially significant. It is located at the De Gaulle Roundabout at the intersection of Nowy Świat street and Jerusalem Avenue. The latter is one of the main streets in Warsaw, featuring the Central Railway Station and the Stalinist Palace of Culture and Science. Nowy Świat, meanwhile, is home to many iconic city sites and governmental buildings in Warsaw, including the Old Town , the Presidential Palace, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Polish Parliament building. De Gaulle Roundabout itself is an important intersection, located by the former Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, which became Warsaw Stock Exchange following the fall of Communism in 1989. During the Second World War, there were numerous Nazi round-ups and murders of Polish civilians in the area and transports of prisoners to the Gestapo Detention Centre on Szucha Avenue. Both streets were almost completely destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Rajkowska has stated that “the name Jerusalem Avenue is a sign of our history. […] The name has grown into our culture to such an extent that nobody can hear what it means.”[16]
Construction
The palm is a life-size replica of a hybrid date and coconut palm tree, mounted on a slightly elevated circular foundation covered with self-seeding weeds. It is a mixed-media art installation, made of metal, PVC, fibreglass, polyurethane resin and natural date palm bark. The 12-meter (36 feet) tall structure is not permanently attached to the ground, instead, it is mounted on an octagonal metal foundation, a so-called grill, weighed down by concrete prefabricates, covered with soil and self-seeding weeds.[17] The trunk is supported by a steel pipe and covered with natural date palm bark. Each leaf is made of fiberglass and resin mounted on a steel core, and attached to the trunk with metal bolts. During its existence, the installation has gone through several technical restorations to stabilize its structure, and ensure durability. The present combination of artificial and natural materials give the replica a natural appearance and make it resistant to weather conditions. The tree itself was made by an American company Soul-utions.Com.
Critical reception
"Greetings from Jerusalem Avenues" attracted media attention before it was even installed. The earliest articles date back to 2001.[18] Once the installation was unveiled, it received immediate attention from the Polish and foreign press. By 2003, numerous articles had been published, including in Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Los Angeles Times, the Polish edition of Newsweek, and Gazeta Wyborcza, a major Polish newspaper. The coverage focused on the political transformation in Poland, accession to the EU, and the country’s economic development. The Newsweek issue featured an image of Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement logo in front of the tree.
"Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue" has received relatively little attention in academic circles. The first critical text was published six years after the project was completed,[19] yet despite becoming one of the most recognizable sights in Warsaw, scholarship addressing the circumstances or impact of the installation has been scarce. Authors have analysed the installation in the context of colonialism and postcolonialism, Polish-Jewish history, memory after the Holocaust, the Polish-Jewish-Palestinian geopolitical triangle, and the emigration of the Jews from Poland to the United States.[20]
Opposition
Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue has been criticised by numerous people and circles on the Polish political right. Some have called it “a punch in the face” to Polish Catholic values.[21] In 2002, Lech Kaczyński, then Mayor of Warsaw and future President of Poland, claimed: “Customarily, this was the place where during Christmas, the Christmas tree was placed. This is our tradition that we should cultivate. [When the permit expires], ideas of this sort will not be tolerated.”[22] Since then, the Christmas tree's location has moved to Castle Square in Warsaw’s Old Town. In June 2022, on the day preceding the Equality Parade, Polish nationalists stopped atthe palm tree during a march organised in the name of Roman Dmowski, a co-founder and chief ideologue of the National Democracy movement in Poland. Among the organisers of the march were Piotr Rybak and actor Wojciech Olszański, both known for their nationalistic and anti-Semitic views. During the march, Olszański, mounted on a horse and dressed in a period military uniform, delivered a speech during which he described Rajkowska’s installation as a sign of Polish “national shame” and a “symbol of [foreign] domination.” He demanded the palm tree be removed and replaced with “a great Slavic oak.”[23]
Public reception and use
Since its inception, the palm tree location has become a prominent site for political and social activists, including women, nurses, LGBTQ+ communities, environmental activists, protesters against the war in Ukraine and other groups.
See also
References
- ^ Rajkowsa.com
- ^ Rajkowsa.com
- ^ Joanna Rajkowska, Where the Beast is Buried. Winchester, UK & Washington, USA: Zero Books 2013. P268
- ^ Uilleam Blacker, Spatial Dialogues and Holocaust Memory in Contemporary Polish Art: Yael Bartana, Rafał Betlejewski and Joanna Rajkowska. The Open Arts Journal 3, 2014. P173.
- ^ Rajkowska, Where the Beast is Buried, 3.
- ^ Żmijewski, Drżące ciała, 304-5.
- ^ Rajkowska, Where the Beast is Buried, 3.
- ^ Multiple authors. Rajkowska: Przewodnik Krytyki Politycznej. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej 2009. Pp. 30-31. ISBN 978-8361006732.
- ^ Jacek Leociak. Biografie ulic. O żydowskich ulicach Warszawy: od narodzin po Zagładę. Warszawa: Dom Spotkań z Historią 2017. 12-13. ISBN: 978-8362020898.
- ^ Żmijewski, Drżące ciała, p. 305.
- ^ Żmijewski, Drżące ciała, p. 305.
- ^ Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak. Getto warszawskie. Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście. Warsaw: Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów 2001
- ^ “Mniejszości narodowe i etniczne. Żydzi.” Serwis Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej
- ^ Żmijewski, Drżące ciała, p. 305.
- ^ "Dlaczego Rajkowska ogołociła palmę? Znamy odpowiedź". Gazeta Wyborcza. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
- ^ Żmijewski, Drżące ciała, p. 306.
- ^ Artur Żmijewski, Drżące ciała. Rozmowy z artystami. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej 2007. Page 296. ISBN: 978-8361006374.
- ^ Artmuseum.pl
- ^ Przewodnik Krytyki Politycznej, P43.
- '^ Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer. The Plastic Palm and Memories in the Making: Conceptual Art Work on Warsaw’s Jerusalem Avenue. International Journal of Politics Culture and Society. 23(4) 2010. 201-211; Blacker, Uilleam. Spatial Dialogues and Holocaust Memory in Contemporary Polish Art: Yael Bartana, Rafał Betlejewski and Joanna Rajkowska. The Open Arts Journal 3, 2014. Pp173-187; Justyna Wierzchowska. Polish Colonial Past and Postcolonial Presence in Joanna Rajkowska’s Art. In: In Other Words: Dialogizing Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonialism. E. Luczak, J. Wierzchowska and J. Ziarkowska (eds.). Peter Lang 2011. 231-246; Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman. A Disruptive Desire to Be Where It Stands. 2020.
- ^ Przewodnik Krytyki Politycznej, 43.
- ^ Przewodnik Krytyki Politycznej, 42.
- ^ Vibez.pl