Whose History?

Billboard International in conjunction with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow (MoCAK) are pleased to present, Whose History?. The year-long site-specific project uses an advertising billboard in the city of Oświęcim, Poland as an exhibition space for a series of artists to present works that confront the city’s conflicted past. The exhibition opened on March 22, 2012 and continues throughout the year with a new artist’s work set to appear on the billboard every five weeks. The site for this project was carefully chosen, based on Oświęcim’s complex history, its unique present state of affairs and difficult yet optimism-inspiring future. The city’s eight hundred year-long history has been overshadowed by events that took place during the Second World War, and for the last seventy-two years this area has become known around the world by its German name, Auschwitz. Within the last three decades the city has become a popular tourist destination, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Positioned centrally in between Oświecim’s Market Square and the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Billboard International symbolically links the tragic past with hope for the future. Whose History? will offer residents, visitors, and passers-by a chance to contemplate how the selected artists’ works function in relation to their surroundings. For Rajkowska's Whose History? exhibition she has developed a work that examines the now extinct socio-political party - the Bundists. She writes, "The project BUND! is about my dream of a socialist, diverse and culturally rich Poland that never happened. The death camp in Auschwitz is a sign, and the culmination of, the historical processes that stopped this dream from becoming true. אַלגעמיינער ייִדישער אַרבעטערסבונד אין ליטע, פּוילן און רוסלאַנד (Algemejner Jidiszer Arbetersbund in Lite, Pojln un Rusland - General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia set up a political direction for the Polish Jewry that seems to be exactly what Poland now needs most. The anti-Zionist, socialist program, free education, anti-religious approach and emphasis on cultural development were the political ideals that not only constituted a substantial counterpoint to the toxic traditions of Polish right-wing politics, but also challenged the religious, Zionist movements like, for example, Agudas Israel. The Holocaust destroyed it all. With the BUND! project I would like to call for a re-examination of the legacy of Bund and for it to be seen as a vivid and important political vision.

Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow (MoCAK)