Elżbieta Jabłońska

In 2005, Elżbieta Jabłońska came across Nowe Życie in a place that later became her home. The restoration efforts lasted several years and involved several art galleries that joined forces to rebuild individual tubes-letters and in 2009 the sign was working again. The artist links this gesture with the ideas, history and traditions of the cooperative movement in Poland and the figure of activist Zygmunt Chmielewski – the director of the Department of Agriculture and Crown Goods and author of the cooperatives’ decalogue. The values proclaimed by Chmielewski concerned not only effective cooperation, but also the importance of mutual help and respect. From the moment it was given a new life, the neon sign was placed on the roofs of art institutions, in parks, on the façade of a power plant, and travelled by barge along the Noteć River. It appeared in conflict-ridden places that await change and a new life.

• Object type:
  metal frame, neon light tubes
• Year:
  2010
• Dimensions:
  2 × 10 × 0,18 m
• inv. no.:
  MNG/NOMUS/12/D
• Własność:
  Deposit of the City of Gdańsk, part of the Gdańsk Collection of Contemporary Art