Palma, Warszawa

Palma is the tall artificial date palm at Charles de Gaulle Roundabout, where Aleje Jerozolimskie meets Nowy Świat. Joanna Rajkowska made this public artwork, and it arrived here on the twelfth of December, two thousand two. Notice the rough palm bark wrapped around the trunk: it is real date-palm bark.

The fronds combine fibreglass and resin around steel, and an octagonal metal frame, weighted with concrete and covered in soil and wild growth, keeps the work in place. The tropical shape carries a difficult Warsaw story. Rajkowska made it to confront the disappearance of Poland’s Jewish community and the way the avenue’s Jerusalem name can pass unnoticed.

That name comes from New Jerusalem, an eighteenth-century Jewish settlement established near today’s Zawisza Square; merchants and craftsmen dismantled it after only two years. The palm has grown into a defining work of Polish public art since the fall of communism, as well as a gathering point for social and political action. Its leaves have even been replaced with dead natural foliage for a climate campaign. The installation now belongs to Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art.