Woman cleaning European History, Warsaw 2015
By Gitte Sætre (copyright)
For this performance, Gitte Sætre cleaned the monument ‘The Uprising’, by sculptor Wincenty Kućma, unveiled in Warsaw in the year of 1988, commissioned by Poland's communist government.
The Uprising is a memorial over one of the most devastating events in European history. The monument also holds the story of the communist authorities of the post-war People's Republic of Poland. The uprising was organized by the Polish resistance movement that had fought for Poland's independence during World War II.
(brutally suppressed by the postwar Stalinist regime).
After the uprising in Poland, the Germans expelled the entire population from the city and spent the whole of October, November and December 1944 in looting Warsaw and destroying whatever was still standing while the Soviets continued to do nothing to intervene, waiting for the Germans to leave. As a result, the significance of the uprising was downplayed for many years, the controversies around this historic event lay within the monument. In fact, political factors made official memorialization of the Warsaw Uprising impossible for decades.
By Gitte Sætre (copyright)
For this performance, Gitte Sætre cleaned the monument ‘The Uprising’, by sculptor Wincenty Kućma, unveiled in Warsaw in the year of 1988, commissioned by Poland's communist government.
The Uprising is a memorial over one of the most devastating events in European history. The monument also holds the story of the communist authorities of the post-war People's Republic of Poland. The uprising was organized by the Polish resistance movement that had fought for Poland's independence during World War II.
(brutally suppressed by the postwar Stalinist regime).
After the uprising in Poland, the Germans expelled the entire population from the city and spent the whole of October, November and December 1944 in looting Warsaw and destroying whatever was still standing while the Soviets continued to do nothing to intervene, waiting for the Germans to leave. As a result, the significance of the uprising was downplayed for many years, the controversies around this historic event lay within the monument. In fact, political factors made official memorialization of the Warsaw Uprising impossible for decades.