Open City

A sculpture commemorating “Baobab”, a more than 130-year-old poplar planted in Litewski Square following the January Uprising and cut down in 2017. Mirosław Bałka’s project, created in 2019, is now entering the realisation phase in Ludowy Park. The 18th edition of OPEN CITY offers an opportunity to follow the process of creating the sculpture, which will enclose the remains of the tree, immortalising the identity of the community built around its (non-)presence.

Mirosław Bałka – sculptor and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he heads the Spatial Activities Studio. His work revolves around the body, memory, passing and private mythology, marked by the experience of post-war Poland and the memory of the Holocaust. He works with humble and elegiac materials — salt, ash, soap, steel and felt — while the scale of his sculptures often derives from the dimensions of his own body.

In 1993, he represented Poland at the Venice Biennale; he has participated in documenta IX in Kassel and biennials in São Paulo, Sydney and Liverpool. In 2009, he created the monumental project How It Is in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London. His works are held in the collections of major museums around the world, including Tate Modern, MoMA, MoCA, SFMOMA, Reina Sofía and Van Abbemuseum, as well as, in Poland, the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and Zachęta.