With the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in mind, Jadwiga Sawicka prepared a design for this installation a few years before its implementation. The artist, when she was invited to take part in the temporary exhibition "Here Muranów" (26 June 2020 – 14 March 2021, POLIN Museum), decided to return to an original idea."Voices" consists of a combination of 48 elements printed with the title word in three languages (Polish, Yiddish in Hebrew, and English), in black font on a uniform orange background, placed in layers.The first layer is written in Yiddish, the second in Polish, and the third in English. They have been partially cut and torn off so as to retain an analogy to poster layers that are successively removed and stuck together. The languages chosen by the artist are not accidental – Polish and Yiddish refer to the speech of the Polish Jews, English – to the language of emigrants – people of Jewish origin or their descendants who, when arriving, do not speak Polish and speak only this language. The work is a reference to the history of the city, in which the urban fabric (walls, pillars and notice boards) bear witness to history, "live" through the growth of layers, inscriptions and meanings. It is a kind of invasive activity, manifested through the appropriation of the place and the message by the new reality. Older information must give way to new, more recent information – regardless of sentiments and the situation, such a change must take place. Finding the past in the previous layers, always with something nostalgic about them, is also associated with aggressive action – destroying (tearing off, forging) what is placed on them.
The word "voices" chosen by the artist is also essential: it expresses the sound as well as the content, symbolises the voices of the past and the content of the subtitles, announcements, signs and advertisements that conveyed important matters for the world at that time, but were covered with new and more recent issues.It is also a reference to the role and place of the POLIN Museum, which, according to the artist, consists of various voices from the past and present, voices of testimony.
The work represents the creative method characteristic of Jadwiga Sawicka, in which she has been implementing her works since the 1990s. It is the use of sentences, fragments, quotations, and single words written in black letters and placed on a uniform, neutral background, usually pink to orange. Single words or sentences are taken out of context and become an extremely condensed carrier of emotions and meanings, while the form complements possible interpretations.
Małgorzata Bogdańska-Krzyżanek