Sibyl 2011

A parallel presentation of the image of the first years of the People’s Republic of Poland – on the basis of official material (in the section entitled: Mothers, wives and… The parallel presentation of the image of the early years of the People’s Republic of Poland – on the basis of official material (in the section titled: Mothers, wives and… tractors, or about Polish women in socialist realism) and authentic material (in the section titled: Letters from the past) goes beyond the convention of the last twenty years of presenting that time, where on the one hand the era of socialist realism has become the subject of a kind of “fashion” and treatment with a pinch of salt, and on the other – it is the subject of research by historians from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), who put emphasis on revealing the mechanisms of the totalitarian system and the havoc in various areas of life, which then took place in Poland.
The presentation of the then newly discovered letters walled up in the wall of the office of the Stalowa Wola Steelworks, which became a nationwide media sensation, had not only the value of novelty, but a reliable biographical-historical foundation, prepared by the creators of the exhibition, and at the same time emphasized the hitherto unknown thread of the history of the local community.
The juxtaposition of the world created by the politically controlled media with the authentic testimony of human feelings, deeply hidden, and yet demanding to be externalized, if only in such an unusual form, as the authors of Letters from the Past did, gave the exhibition’s viewers the opportunity to weave their own reflections.