Grass, Just Grass | Collection Co–selection

Many works by Krzysztof Bednarski focus on history – both personal, and collective. The installation Grass, Just Grass refers to the memory of people who were sent to Soviet labour camps. In consists of 12 wooden boxes filled with peat, in which the artist planted stalks of chopped barbed wire covered with green plastic, which look like real grass from a distance.

The piece is illuminated by low-hanging lamps, leading to a strange smell, similar to smell of wet earth, which becomes one of the work’s components. The constant light is also a symbol of unrelenting, inescapable observation. On some of the wires, the artist placed red balls that resemble the fruit of some plant, but also evoke the image of drops of blood on the grass.

Around one and a half million Poles and people of Polish were placed in Soviet gulags, many of those imprisoned there never returned. People of different nationalities suffered and died there. This work commemorates their tragedy, of which there are not many material traces left – it is a kind of monument to the victims of totalitarianism, a form of a symbolic grave.