Objects

The composition of the work consists of three juxtaposed parts: a print of an aerial photograph of the Jedwabne area from the 1950s, a simplified drawing of the facade of a tenement house on Hamburger Strasse in Berlin, on which, as one of the few, traces of bullets from the period of the Second World War were visible, created based on a photograph taken by Zakrzewski, and a drawing depicting the arrangement of these traces.

The work was created in the summer of 2001 as one of several collages and drawings with a war context made by the artist, although it was the only one to refer directly to the Jedwabne pogrom. Anda Rottenberg writes about it in the introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition "What Did the Artist Say?": "In most European landscapes there are no traces of tragic events and crimes committed. Unless you zoom in on a bullet-riddled facade of a building. With photographs of such facades, already included in the drawings of the "Jedwabne'' series, Zakrzewski marks other works on paper. Until he comes to an extensive visual treatise "Sky over Berlin", divided into several chapters and realised (in three versions) using a rich palette of means. All preceded by careful research in history (ancient and recent), geography, astronomy, linguistics and the language of propaganda".

In the background of the central part of the composition, the artist included a faint outline of a peasant figure – a victim of the Albania-Kosovo conflict, reproduced from a New York Times photograph. Thus, although this work relates primarily to the events in Jedwabne, it takes on a universal dimension, with each of its parts symbolising the immense suffering of the civilian population – the greatest victims of each war. MBK