Domostwo - Ewa Rudnicka & Hélène Soulier
Domostwo > Ewa Rudnicka & Hélène Soulier, 2020
“The plot corresponds to an old set of plots of miner’s cottage where Polish miners and their families lived. The archives show us several types of dwellings, we feel that the plot was the link between the two slag heaps : houses or dwellings probably housing several families, gardens, vegetable gardens. Disappeared since, this plot offers us the possibility of a memory of these Polish families and among them, those who perished in the dust explosion of 1975.
Domostwo is a celebration to pay tribute to the families and the miner’s cottage, to the time spent between the mine and “at home”, to the places of persons who left their country and found refuge there, at this place. It is a greeting, a memory, a reminder of their presence.
After studying the archives, the plot delimiting the houses and gardens was restored on the site, as it could appear to us, in its initial orientation, in the dimensions we could imagine. There are several houses and their corresponding gardens : the lines of white wood trace the plan of the houses, often separated into two dwellings, while the lines of birch trees fill the plots around the houses. This intervention gives a dimension to the plot. The white woods, distributed at a fixed height according to the houses that they are supposed to indicate, make it possible to realize the old domestic space as to become a playground, an experimentation ground for children, seats for adults, or places where imaginaries or even memories develop.”
Project of Ewa Rudnicka & Hélène Soulier
The artist
Ewa Rudnicka, Hélène Soulier