Trembling Bodies, Buried Beast, and Nomadic Objects: The Performative Life of Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue (Warsaw, Poland 2012- )

The Department of Performance Studies is excited to welcome  Justyna Wierzchowska, an Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw as a Visiting Scholar this year to give this unique talk as part of our Spring Lecture Series. 

Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue is arguably the most iconic art project realized in Poland's public space after the political transformation of 1989. Conceived as a social experiment by the internationally recognized Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska, this site-specific installation was meant to metaphorically bring the “vanished Jews back into the landscape of contemporary Poland” (Blacker 2014). However, due to the ongoing difficulty in Poland to deal with Polish-Jewish history, as well as the present social, economic and political struggles, since its inception, the project’s location has become a prominent site for various activists, including women, nurses, LGBTQ+ communities, environmental activists, protesters against the war in Ukraine, and others. Wierzchowska will discuss the performative life of Rajkowska’s installation from historical, postcolonial and psychosocial perspectives to read it as symptomatic of the most sensitive areas of Polish cultural memory and identity. She will also offer a quick glimpse into her current book project Related for Life, which discusses Marina Abramovic’s performance The Artist is Present (2010), Joanna Rajkowska’s site-specific art, and offers a mothering-oriented reading of the art by Georgia O’Keeffe, Janine Antoni and Renee Cox.

IMPORTANT ATTENDANCE INFORMATION:

This event is open to the general public. Reserving a ticket in advance is REQUIRED. Please use the event link above to book a ticket before 4pm of the day of the event.

All guests will be required to show a government photo ID and proof of vaccination at the door. More information on NYU's Guest Policies can be found here.

SPEAKER BIO:

Justyna Wierzchowska is an Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. She holds a MA degree in American Studies and Philosophy, and a PhD in American Studies. She combines psychoanalysis and affect theory to explore the relational and affective dimensions of subjectivity that are manifested in contemporary European and American visual art and culture. She is the author of The Absolute and the Cold War: Discourses of Abstract Expressionism (2011), co-editor of In Other Words: Dialogizing Postcoloniality, Race, and Ethnicity (2012) and of the special issue On Uses of Black Camp (2018). She also authors numerous academic articles published in Poland and abroad that focus on the manifestations of the mothering practice in contemporary visual art. She teaches courses in philosophy, American art, American art history, art theory, feminist art, and cultural studies. She translates into Polish American modern fiction and art-related books.