"Domestic Poem#2" by Maya Gordon

In March, recalling another anniversary of March '68, POLIN Museum presents a work from its own collection: "Domestic Poem#2," 2007 by Maya Gordon.

• 6–27 March 2024
• Core Exhibition, G9 gallery

This work, one of the two in "Domestic poem" series, considered by the artist herself to be exceptionally important in her work, is closely related to the identity and nationality dilemmas that Jews living in Poland have struggled with for centuries. It is a large-format balloon that shrinks and expands, as if it were 'breathing', in the shape of a rescaled cupboard on which the details of the furniture were applied with acrylic paint.

The cupboard from the family home, carefully recreated from her childhood memories, was an object of symbolic importance to the artist. The cupboard was where she wanted to live as a child, so it became a symbol of safety, solidity and domestic warmth for her. The artist describes her work as follows:

"This memory can't be real – once it's there, you want to hug it, and then it's gone – it drops and tries to disappear. The balloon-cupboard is in the proportions in which I, as a 5-year-old child, saw this huge piece of furniture. Even as an adult artist I realised a sculptural form consisting mainly of rubber and air, which you want to cuddle up to, and then as the air escapes you want to save it, just like a childhood dream – not much depends on you, you only watch and then things happen next to you."

The symbolic meaning of the furniture formed during her childhood was reinforced as a result of her emigration experience – moving from country to country, from Poland to Israel and then the Netherlands, the artist experienced both closeness and alienation. Her longing to 'be home' is a kind of nostalgia familiar to any expatriate.