Collage from Joanna Rajkowska's Born in Berlin - A Letter to Rosa, 2011-2012
The Polish installation artist presents several major projects as part of Gallery Weekend Berlin and the 2012 Berlin Biennale of contemporary art in cooperation with the Żak Branicka Gallery
Joanna Rajkowska spent over a year making a two-part film dedicated to her young daughter. The first film - Born in Berlin - is about Rajkowska's decision to give birth to her daughter in Berlin and explaining how she came to decide to call her daughter Rosa. Rajkowska's decision to live and give birth to her daughter in Berlin is symbolic of the choice of many artists to emigrate or temporarily move to the city and how this choice will forever impact her daughter's life as she will always have Berlin stamped in her official documents as her place of birth. A personal story of migration gains a broader context of society at large where migration is a common aspect of life in a global society. As Rajkowska explains, "The city and its history will be a part of her life forever".
Rajkowska named her daughter after two significant women in her life, her great-grandmother, Róża Stern and Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish revolutionary and leftist intellectual from Zamość who spent most of her life in Berlin. She was arrested and executed in Berlin following protests of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) in 1919.
The second part of the film, Born in Berlin - A Letter to Rosa is made up of over 100 illustrations and collages that come together as a pictorial letter to her daughter upon her birth. The message of the work is both intimate and startling as Rajkowska says,
I believe that the place of birth has a significant influence over each human being’s fate and their attitude to it. You return to it like an animal, you think about it in a special way. Rosa will associate Berlin with a life giving beginning, even though she is not going to remember it. The first breath she draws, the first sound she makes, her first struggle to overcome an infection will always and forever be tied to the city and nothing will ever change this fact.
In the film Rajkowska trails a painful map of Berlin, taking her daughter through those locations that carry a significant historical and political burden. In the process she confronts society's hopes for the future (society as represented by her newborn daughter, a citizen of the future) and attempts to reconcile past, present and future. Wars and injustices committed in the past have given way to a new present in a city that today stands among the most dynamic in Europe, both economically and artistically. This hope is manifested in such statements as "Do you see, my daughter, how beautiful the greenery is? This is the colour of healing, hope and freedom". The Żak Branicka Gallery presents more than 100 drawings, photographs and collages that make up the project.
Joanna Rajkowska is among Poland's most interesting artists engaged in a socially-aware form of blending individual, private histories with a wider, universal social and political context. She has created several major works in the public space in Warsaw, such as Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue (2002) - a fake palm tree that references Poland's Jewish presence - and the Oxygenator (2007) - a green space in the centre of Warsaw. Her latest work is certainly more intimate than her public projects and yet she brings her private life into the public forum.
Born in Berlin - A Letter to Rosa is being shown at the Żak Branicka Gallery as part of Gallery Weekend Berlin, opening on the 27th of April 2012 at 6:00 pm. Gallery Weekend Berlin hosts a number of events aimed at making Berlin's residents more engaged in the art scene, with such events as Slow Art Day on the 28th of April - an international initiative that brings a new perspective to experiencing art. It's also being shown at this year's Berlin Biennale, along with her Final Fantasies project. Final Fantasies asks the controversial question "How would you like to die" to people who are actually on the brink of leaving this world, people who are left to wither away in hospices. She gives her subjects leave to imagine a perfect death, to envision the ideal environment for leaving the past behind and then records these fantasies in illustrations and film. It is an attempt to include a generally invisible part of the population back into society and gives them a voice that is immediately relevant to their current situation.
Rajkowska's Sumpfstadt is also being shown in Berlin thanks to the Polish Institute in Berlin, which hosts the show between the 19th of April and the 31st of August. The project is among one of the artist's "impossible monuments", which ask what would happen to a city such as Berlin if it were to empty of people and nature would take over anew. This "city of mud" would crack, get moldy and get filled with trees, grass, weeds and other plants as the relics of civilisation slowly crumble. The Polish Institute in Berlin and the Żak Branicka Gallery are also planning to publish a catalogue of her works entitled A Guide to Joanna Rajkowska.
Born in Berlin - A Letter to Rosa was co-produced by the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art and the Żak Branicka Foundation, also made possible thanks to the support of the Foundation of German-Polish Cooperation and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Joanna Rajkowska’s projects in Berlin:
Born in Berlin – A Letter to Rosa
ŻAK | BRANICKA Gallery
Venue: Lindenstr 35, 10969 Berlin
Exhibition: April 28 – June 16, 2012
Born in Berlin and Final Fantasies
7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art
Venue: Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Exhibition: April 27 - July 1, 2012
Sumpfstadt
Polish Institute in Berlin
Venue: Polish Institute, Burgstraße 27, 10178 Berlin
Exhibition: April 19 – August 31, 2012
Author: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Żak Branicka Gallery
For more information on the artist, see the catalogue on berlin.polnischekultur.de