Celebratio

The term "Celebratio" in Latin refers to performing a religious ceremony or conducting an act with reverence or grandeur. The video and object presented at the Centre of the Worlds is Here Festival during the "Celebrations" edition explore how we commemorate figures and events within the Polish cultural landscape, as well as the mechanisms that determine whom we honour and how we celebrate significant anniversaries.

My reference point is an installation and performance I realized at the Railway Station in Leszno in 2017 during the commemorations honouring Polish soldiers who attempted to rescue a woman kidnapped by a unit of Soviet soldiers stationed in Poland after World War II. This confrontation resulted in an armed skirmish at the Leszno station, and as a consequence, the Polish soldiers were sentenced to death by a Stalinist court. A decade ago, a plaque was erected at the railway station in their memory, and on the anniversary of this event, local politicians, scouts, and school youth lay flowers there while soldiers stand guard.

My installation — a plaque dedicated to the abducted woman named Zofia Rojuk — was placed next to the commemorative plaque bearing the names of the soldiers. Zofia, as a result of the events at the station, was separated from her daughter and taken to a Soviet gulag. Through this intervention, I aimed to highlight a narrative that diverges from the typical military patriotism, which often honours male heroes while depicting women as anonymous, powerless "objects of exchange" whose suffering is overlooked. The installation I created in Leszno is titled For Zofia. In this work, I commemorated her by reenacting her archival portrait photograph.

The project presented during the festival in Przemyśl includes a video that recounts Zofia Rojuk's story and documents my performance titled "Flower for Zofia," in which I laid flowers along with a poem dedicated to her under the commemorative plaque. Next to the video, I displayed a case containing archival photos from the performance, a flower, and an object resembling a medal or coin featuring an image of Zofia. This medal is based on a photograph that I placed beside the commemorative plaque dedicated to the soldiers on the station wall.

The work raises questions about the relationship between historical facts and their interpretations, as well as the roles of rituals and objects in the creation of national myth and hero worship.



See: Anka Lesniak For Zofia, Leszno, 2017