AUSCHWITZWIELICZKA

The AUSCHWITZWIELICZKA work prepared for the Visual Arts Festival in Kraków is the first permanent installation to be realised by the artist in a public space in Poland. This work is an effect of the personal reflection and experiences as well as of the mindful observation of the phenomena occurring in contemporary culture. One of them found its reflection in the advertisement of a Krakow tourist agency: "In eight hours, you will have the opportunity to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps to move on to the beautiful salt mines of Wieliczka sightseeing of which provides excellent entertainment". For those planning a trip to Krakow, Auschwitz and Wieliczka seem to be melting into one, branding "eight-hour-monument" to contemporary culture, a peculiar journey to its "catacombs".

The sculpture made of concrete is 17m long, 2.5m high, 2.5m wide and it weighs 17 tons.

Born in Warsaw in 1958, Mirosław Bałka lives and works in Warsaw and Otwock. In his works employing sculpture, installations, and video techniques, in a manner which is very intimate and permeated with deep reflection, he refers to personal experience, also including the experience of Catholicism, and to the difficult and tangled history of Poland. He presents the issue of the complex and complicated relations between personal memory and historical remembrance.

He belongs to the most prominent artists of his generation. His works have won recognition of critics, curators, and collectors in Poland and worldwide. This was confirmed, among others, in the form of the London Tate Modern's (the world's largest and most prestigious public gallery) invitation to provide an installation for the Turbine Hall in the framework of "The Unilever Series" - one of the most spectacular projects dedicated to contemporary art.