Reprint
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Zofia Janina Borysewicz, a designer and typographer, is another artist to present her work in the Rotating Gallery. The “Reprint” project aims at revealing the nature of the complicated relations of Polish and Jewish languages.
- 18-25 September, during the Museum’s opening hours, in the last gallery of the Core Exhibition
The artist presents her own selection of bi-lingual placards (the so-called ephemeral prints) from the interwar period. She juxtaposes the archival material with her own palimpsest. In her posters, she ventures a new interpretation of the texts from the original prints, translating their content into the contemporary visual language. By using both new and old placards, she creates a multi-layered object, sometimes peeling, uneven and wrinkled, and yet still in one piece.
Typography is everywhere: on road signs, buildings, packaging, labels, the Internet, books, newspapers, and mobile phones. Designing letters is about creating a cohesive communication system. Every detail, no matter how small, is important—it aims to amplify the message. The shapes of letters carry emotions and meaning, and the history of characters and fonts can be truly inspiring.
Letters are carriers of meaning, not just elements of words. Posters and other bilingual ephemeral prints from the twentieth century are examples of the intertwined and interacting Polish-Jewish relations. These materials were intended for a bilingual audience, but sometimes also for non-Jewish individuals. The project presents the material evidence of what remains from these encounters.
Thanks to Aleksandra Stępień from the letterpress workshop at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and Natalia Chmielarz from the Center for Yiddish Culture for their substantive support.
Zofia Janina Borysiewicz – designer, typographer, post-tourist with a background in anthropology, an enthusiast of letters in all their manifestations. Her works are based on in-depth research. Zofia is the author of the design for “Szwendownik. Nowy kanon krajoznawczy” [The Wanderer. A New Canon of Sightseeing] which was granted an Honourable Mention at the Most Beautiful Polish Book contest in 2024. In 2021, following several years of work and research, Zofia published her multi-script font which she called Chaim&Aviva. The font combines a prewar project of Hebrew letters designed by Jan Levitt with contemporary design of the Latin alphabet. The font is available free of charge for commercial use on the Culture.pl portal.
The year 2024 marks POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews’ 10th anniversary. To celebrate this occasion, we want to make the voices of Jewish artists heard by creating a rotating, lively, polyphonic space in the last gallery of the Core Exhibition—a space for Jewish artists to express themselves.
Read more about Rotating Gallery →
Partners:
Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage – project: "Rotating Gallery as part of POLIN Museum’s 10th birthday celebration (developing a network of Jewish artists)."
