Kamila Szejnoch – Huśtawka (Swing)

September 5th, 2011

Huśtawka (Swing) was a temporary art installation at the Kościuszkowców monument in Warsaw, Poland, created by the sculptor and installation artist Kamila Szejnoch in September 2008.

Huśtawka (Swing)

Swing was part of a trio of works called Carousel Slide Swing, about which Szejnoch said:

The project Carousel Slide Swing aims to pursue a dialog with memorials that served as communist propaganda. Although such memorials have been consigned to the historical scrap heap, we can still meet them in the streets and parks. To suggest a change in the function of the monuments is an attempt to build a bridge between the present and the past, to add a contemporary layer distinct from their original style and function. For example, the idea of Swing is based on a contrast between the monumental bronze Berling Army Soldier and a tiny individual swung by a big hand of history. It is a monument from a former era, but at the same time — from the Berling Army soldier’s point of view — it is a well-deserved tribute paid to his sacrifice. This is an example of how much history can differ from the perspectives of individual and collective memory. My aim is to make this complexity and ambiguity more conspicuous, to show the relation between an individual versus the historical machine.

Huśtawka (Swing)

Huśtawka (Swing)

The statue where Swing was installed can be seen on Google Maps, and was constructed by the communist government of Poland in the early 1980s and officially unveiled in 1985. Swing won the Szpilman Award in 2008, an international competition for works of ephemeral or temporary art.

Huśtawka (Swing)

Huśtawka (Swing)

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