Esther’s Willow
Artistic intervention in Chrzanów and exhibition in Krakow
events Program
Esther's Willow is a public project of the artists: sisters Marta and Katarzyna Sala from Chrzanów and Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman from Philadelphia, whose ancestors lived in Jarosław and Warsaw.
The project focuses on working with memory around the former Esther’s Square, the location of the Great Synagogue of Chrzanów demolished in the 1970s. The artists' years-long process of research, collaboration, and making brought regional and local institutions, contemporary inhabitants, descendants, survivors, and their dead together to mark, contemplate, mourn, enliven, and honor the square and the generations that surround/ed and fill/ed it.
The main goal of the project is to replant the tree in the place of the former synagogue and name it Estera's Willow, referring to the currently nameless Estera Square in front of MOKSiR in Chrzanów. The artists invite the audience to plant the Willow of Esther together using the symbolic "silent water" and to participate in the events accompanying the project from June 28 to July 3, 2022.
The gesture of replanting the tree reveals an old, intimate space of ancestral transcultural experiences where Jewish and Slavic communities jointly trusted willows. In their world, the willow appeared as a tree of power, an antidote to cure viruses, disease, infertility, and bodily pain. The willow as a link between the living and the dead can once again create a bridge and a basis for mutual relations.
The project is being created in cooperation with FestivALT in Krakow, the Museum in Chrzanów. Irena and Mieczysław Mazaraki, MOKSiR in Chrzanów, dr Marek Tuszewicki and Śomi (Dominika Śmigocka). The project was supported by Allianz and the European Union.
Sponsors
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Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman
ROBERT YERACHMIEL SNIDERMAN is a fourth generation Ashkenazi-American settler from places in the traditional territory of the Lenape diaspora, with ancestral ties to eradicated Jewish communities in Warsaw, Jaroslaw and Rzeszów (PL), Chișinău (MLD), Dnipro (UKR), and Seirijai (LITH). As an interdisciplinary artist, curator, poet, and organizer he constructs art interventions, plays, films, installations, exhibitions, social and public projects, and texts, often in collaboration with other artists and specific communities.
His contributions establish difficult situations for durational contemplation and vernacular rites, manifesting a quiet language of intense proximity over time by radicalizing accidents, anxieties, and memory. Recent works include the performance archive Lost in Jüdischer Friedhof Weißensee (2018); the film Ślepowrony/Night Herons (2021) made with Joanna Rajkowska; and السماء إلى الصعود بيان Flight Manifesto (ongoing), a river walk and sonic archive made with Brel Froebe, Cascadia Deaf Nation, Dirar Kalash, Samara Hayley Steele and many others. He is Assistant Professor in Socially Engaged Art at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies of Western Washington University (USA) on traditional Coast Salish territory. -
Marta Sala
MARTA SALA is a transdisciplinary artist focusing on issues such as precariousness, intersectionality, right to the city, ecology, common goods, joint actions and creative anarchism. Images, collages, installations and objects, costumes, videos and artistic activities in cooperation with other people are equal forms of her activity. In her works, she uses clippings, waste, elements and stories that are excluded, rejected and marginalized. Sala grew up in Chrzanów, in the years 2000-2015 she lived in Krakow, where she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of prof. Leszek Misiak.
She collaborated with Cecylia Malik and Kolektyw Niedzielni, co-creating artistic actions and protests in defense of the nature and cultural heritage of the city. Since 2015, she has been living in Berlin, where she graduated from the Institute for Art in Context at the Universität der Künste (DAAD scholarship 2017-20). In 2020, together with the Kurdish writer Abdulkadir Musa, she implemented the multilingual artistic and literary project Û∞-Berlîn Creative-Anarchist Chronicle of Urban Escapes and in 2021, with Johanna Reichhart and other Berlin-based artists, Work break in Görli. Artistic relationship systems in public space. At the WOW exhibition at the LeGuern Gallery in Warsaw (2021), she presented a series of abstract compositions made of recycled materials, experiences of constant relocation and artistic research in recent years -
Katarzyna Sala
KATARZYNA SALA graduated with a BA in Dutch Philology at the Free University of Berlin and an MA in Philosophy from the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków. She co-creates literary and artistic projects, focusing on the culture of memory, contemporary literature and the intersections of literature, art and social affairs. The latest projects are Wierzba Estery 2021-2022, Work break in Görli. Artistic relations systems in public space 2021/2022, Û∞-Berlîn Kreatywno-Anarchistyczna Kronika Ucieczka Miejskich 2020, and an anthology of Kurdish poems Kurdish Voices from Rojava / Dengên helbestvanên kurd ji Rojava (Inner Child Press, Ltd 2017).
Her artistic practice includes participatory projects, literary translations, film experiments and sound art. She lives and works in Berlin.
An exhibition presenting the Estera's Willow project. The exhibition will be open until the end of July. Free entrance.
A Silent Water walk led by the artist Śomi
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Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman
ROBERT YERACHMIEL SNIDERMAN is a fourth generation Ashkenazi-American settler from places in the traditional territory of the Lenape diaspora, with ancestral ties to eradicated Jewish communities in Warsaw, Jaroslaw and Rzeszów (PL), Chișinău (MLD), Dnipro (UKR), and Seirijai (LITH). As an interdisciplinary artist, curator, poet, and organizer he constructs art interventions, plays, films, installations, exhibitions, social and public projects, and texts, often in collaboration with other artists and specific communities.
His contributions establish difficult situations for durational contemplation and vernacular rites, manifesting a quiet language of intense proximity over time by radicalizing accidents, anxieties, and memory. Recent works include the performance archive Lost in Jüdischer Friedhof Weißensee (2018); the film Ślepowrony/Night Herons (2021) made with Joanna Rajkowska; and السماء إلى الصعود بيان Flight Manifesto (ongoing), a river walk and sonic archive made with Brel Froebe, Cascadia Deaf Nation, Dirar Kalash, Samara Hayley Steele and many others. He is Assistant Professor in Socially Engaged Art at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies of Western Washington University (USA) on traditional Coast Salish territory. -
Marta Sala
MARTA SALA is a transdisciplinary artist focusing on issues such as precariousness, intersectionality, right to the city, ecology, common goods, joint actions and creative anarchism. Images, collages, installations and objects, costumes, videos and artistic activities in cooperation with other people are equal forms of her activity. In her works, she uses clippings, waste, elements and stories that are excluded, rejected and marginalized. Sala grew up in Chrzanów, in the years 2000-2015 she lived in Krakow, where she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of prof. Leszek Misiak.
She collaborated with Cecylia Malik and Kolektyw Niedzielni, co-creating artistic actions and protests in defense of the nature and cultural heritage of the city. Since 2015, she has been living in Berlin, where she graduated from the Institute for Art in Context at the Universität der Künste (DAAD scholarship 2017-20). In 2020, together with the Kurdish writer Abdulkadir Musa, she implemented the multilingual artistic and literary project Û∞-Berlîn Creative-Anarchist Chronicle of Urban Escapes and in 2021, with Johanna Reichhart and other Berlin-based artists, Work break in Görli. Artistic relationship systems in public space. At the WOW exhibition at the LeGuern Gallery in Warsaw (2021), she presented a series of abstract compositions made of recycled materials, experiences of constant relocation and artistic research in recent years -
Katarzyna Sala
KATARZYNA SALA graduated with a BA in Dutch Philology at the Free University of Berlin and an MA in Philosophy from the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków. She co-creates literary and artistic projects, focusing on the culture of memory, contemporary literature and the intersections of literature, art and social affairs. The latest projects are Wierzba Estery 2021-2022, Work break in Görli. Artistic relations systems in public space 2021/2022, Û∞-Berlîn Kreatywno-Anarchistyczna Kronika Ucieczka Miejskich 2020, and an anthology of Kurdish poems Kurdish Voices from Rojava / Dengên helbestvanên kurd ji Rojava (Inner Child Press, Ltd 2017).
Her artistic practice includes participatory projects, literary translations, film experiments and sound art. She lives and works in Berlin.
A procession in silence from the Chrzanów railway station through Aleja Henryka and the Market Square to the former Plac Estery.
If you are willing, please bring a container with silent water to water the tree. You can also bring a chair with you.
At approximately 1:00 p.m. we will begin the ceremony of planting of Esther's Willow on the former Estera square in front of MOKSiR.
Concert of the Mojše Band inspired by the work of the Chrzanów cantor Hirsh Leib Bakon.