Magdalena Howorus-Czajka
University of Gdansk, Poland
Download articlePublished in: Current Issues in European Cultural Studies; June 15-17; Norrköping; Sweden 2011
Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 62:56, p. 529-536
Published: 2011-11-22
ISBN: 978-91-7519-993-1
ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)
The presentation focuses on a new approach to cultural memory studies on the example of the sculptures of Wiktor Tolkin – the famous Polish artist; who represents the generation that grew up in the harsh realities of Second World War times. His monuments transcript the memory of II world war’s experience and at the same time raise problems of visual shaping of memory.
The cultural memory is a process evolving in time. The artist always presents his/hers own; individual memory included in universalistic cultural memory – at the same time the artist connects individual and popular meaning of these problems. The artefacts undertake the dialog with the new generations of recipients and transfer individual tensions/emotions of artist into individual feeling of visitors; which in turn shape new society’s popular memory. These changes of society’s memory are always involved in politics and power relations. Polish society is the good example of this process; because the transformation of state’s system was undertaken twenty years ago; therefore it gives a good opportunity to observe these dynamic changes.