The photograph taken by Jadwiga Sawicka, entitled "Kamizelka" (Vest), shows a red, highlander-style vest for children, decorated with floral embroidery, which is in the collection of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The vest was a gift from Teofila Wawrzyniak, who recalled: "My grandfather bought it in Zakopane before the war. It survived in hiding throughout the occupation. It is the only memento that I have left of my entire family." Various people looked after it both during the occupation when she was hiding with a Polish family in the countryside, and during her stay in a Jewish orphanage, where she ended up after the war, then during her emigration to Sweden in March 1968, until she donated it to the museum collections. Jadwiga Sawicka's photo was created for the temporary exhibition, "Biografie rzeczy. Dary z kolekcji Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich" (Biographies of Things. Gifts from the collection of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews) (18 October 2013 – 3 March 2014, MHŻP), essential as the first presentation of the museum collection, and in honour of the donors who have donated items to the museum collection. The exhibition was divided into seven parts, each of them consisting of exhibitions of thematically divided objects from the collection, and a contemporary artist was invited to each to comment on the message of this part of the exhibition using the language characteristic of their work. Jadwiga Sawicka made a "Vest" for the "Ukrywanie" (Hiding) part, and she chose this outfit from among museum objects because of its unique history, as well as her creative strategy, for which it is characteristic of presenting fragments of clothing.
The images of clothes placed on a neutral background have been a motif in Jadwiga Sawicka’s work since the mid-1990s. At that time, the artist painted small acrylic paintings on paper, depicting individual items of clothing, then, at the end of this decade, she also created analogous series on canvas; she also carved fragments of clothes in plasticine and photographed them. For the creator, things presented without their owners are a carrier of the past, individualism and the history of their owners.
MBK