Berlin–Warsaw

Highways in Warsaw and Berlin. Screen prints on canvas and paper, 2006. Warsaw 91.

1991 is the year the German-Polish Treaty on Good Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation was signed in Bonn, and Poland was admitted to the Council of Europe. That year saw the first democratic Sejm and Senate elections since 1926.

Three photos from central Warsaw in 1991 form the basis for this screen print series, which addresses the inhospitable space in the city center. The socialist urban body of the postwar years was about to undergo a transformation and enter a new era. The highway right next to the main train station and the Palace of Culture and Science sits in the city like a foreign body.

This space waits to be reclaimed and becomes a symbol of Poland's social and political transformation.

Specifically, these are the A100 city highway and an apartment building on Bernhardstraße.

Suddenly, movement borders on stasis, public street space on private space, highway on living room.