When artists like Robert Irwin and Richard Serra helped pioneer site-specific art, they shifted attention away from the gallery space toward the meaning of place itself. Decades later, Kamila Szejnoch, who lives and works in Warsaw, Poland, continues that legacy through site-specific work that dances between contrasting elements: one historical and fixed and the other contemporary, playful, or interactive. Her work is not limited to the white cube atmosphere but rather connected to tangible objects, such as statues, monuments, or forgotten urban imagery, which possess a predisposed meaning and show how this meaning can influence our identity.

Her 2008 installation, Slide Swing, for instance, was a public space project in Warsaw, where the artist suspended a red swing from the hand of a bronze Berlin Army soldier monument, intended to create a bridge between past and present, contrasting the “big hand of history” with the immediacy of individual experience. This intervention is a good example of the artist’s interplay between individual memory and the historical machine. Most of her body of work seeks to investigate public symbols and how they influence identity, making visible, updating, or reimagining different layers of the past and bringing them back into public consciousness. In addition, the artist’s use of play as a universal tool for social integration, addressing tragic and overwhelming historical experiences and disarming them, connects Szejnoch’s practice to relational aesthetics, in which art is understood not as a self-contained object but as a social situation shaped by encounter, participation, and context.

In recent works, such as Axis Mundi (Petrila, Romania, 2025), the artist builds on the philosophical concepts of Mircea Eliade to highlight local identity amid industrial decay. This artwork can be understood through the production of space, which deeply connects with her overall practice, where the sites she chooses are not neutral but socially and historically charged environments and, in this case, become a site-specific intervention that reorients a damaged post-industrial landscape into a place of symbolic intensity.

Given that Szejnoch’s body of work heavily depends on site-specific intervention, I was curious to unpack her views on the power of art within contemporary contexts and how art can resonate with those who interact with it.

Can you start by providing a foundational overview of your artistic practice? What specific moments made you the artist you are today?

I guess becoming an artist is a process. When I was a child, I liked drawing. At 12 years old, I started attending ceramics classes, where I had a chance to make my first sculptures. A few years later, I knew I wanted to study sculpture. I felt that was it!

So, originally, I am a sculptor. I studied at the Sculpture Department in Warsaw. During my studies, from traditional clay nudes, we went towards performance, video, and photography. After a few years, I felt it wasn’t exactly my element. I was more interested in urban space than "body art". At the same time, I had an opportunity to go to a workshop for artists and students in Belgrade, where I did my first work in public space. It was the Red Carpet in front of the former Tito’s Mausoleum. It was a chance to experiment with large-scale in the city for the first time.

In your statement and in our previous conversation, you mentioned being interested in “art in context”. Could you elaborate further on this idea?

Yes, I am interested in ‘context’ rather than in a ‘white cube’. My point of departure is usually an existing public space, and my favourite topics are, in most cases, history and urban or natural symbols. At the same time, I need something tangible as my starting point. I choose a certain motif or object, as long as its form is interesting enough to provoke interaction. It is important that the selected place or form has its significance. I refer to a layer of meaning that already exists and is important to people, or one that has been forgotten. Then I try to approach, update, or just remind outdated layers of the past by adding something new and contrasting, different from their original style or function.

You are particularly focused on exploring history, symbols, and the elements of the social realm which influence our identity. How do you approach documenting these themes through your visual work? Especially in the context of public art?

Usually, my goal is to create a site-specific project related to local history and context. Humans are symbolic beings. We use verbal and visual language; we need symbols, in a word, a certain level of abstraction. However, I also think in a ‘sculptural’ way at the same time. I start with forms; I need something tangible as a starting point, a monument, a statue, an object, a place, to find a wider mental and social dimension later on.

Most of my works consist of two main elements. One is historical, traditional, already fixed in its form; the second one is more contemporary, playful, and interactive. Personally, I like using elements, formats, and styles that are already present in a given location, which means I don't actually create aesthetics myself but rather use various formats that already exist in my surroundings. I find ready-made forms and introduce them into a different context.

One key aspect of your practice involves intervening with monuments, repurposing them to revive the histories they embody. An example of this is your Warsaw installation, Swing. Can you lead us through the intensive research process of this installation and its challenges?

SWING, the installation in public space (2008), was a dialogue with memorials that served as communist propaganda. I wanted to suggest a change in the function of the monument, to build a bridge between the present and the past, and to deal somehow with uncomfortable or painful history.

The idea of Swing was based on a contrast between the monumental bronze Berlin Army Soldier and a tiny individual swung by a big hand of history. It is a monument from a former era, but at the same time, from the Berlin Army soldier’s point of view, it was a well-deserved tribute paid to his sacrifice. This is an example of how much history can differ from the perspectives of individual and collective memory. My aim was also to show the relation between an individual and the historical machine.

Before the opening day, I had been systematically preparing for the project, not only by researching the history of World War II but also by sending letters to the District Office in Warsaw. The office first approved the installation, but two days before the opening, I received information that permission had not been granted because war veterans protested against the idea. I felt sorry for the veterans, but I decided to hang the swing anyway, illegally. Shortly afterwards, police arrived. I had to dismantle the swing the same evening. We waited for the lift, but we were still swinging. The swing worked and looked great! Maybe I had a slight sense of guilt that I hurt someone's feelings, even though I didn’t share them. But I don't share them, not because I disregard their wartime tragedy, but because for me this monument is a symbol of the wheels of history, not their personal history. The wheels of history in which they were all entangled.

Could you share insights about your work AXIS MUNDI 2025, set in a post-industrial, post-mining region of Romania? What concepts and motivations drove this artistic intervention?

I went to Romania in the summer of 2025, to a post-industrial town, Petrila. In this area, of the 15 coal mines, only 2 or 3 still work. The rest have been closed.

Coming to Petrila, I had only an overall image of the place. I was really amazed by the warm welcome, hospitality, and the big heart of the people I met there, as well as their engagement, imagination, and strong influence on reality. The local artistic “grassroots initiative” managed to save the coal mine from demolition, and finally, it got the status of a historical monument! There is a very interesting documentary movie, “Planeta Petrila”, about the whole process on HBO.

When I arrived, I was also surprised by a combination of (post)industrial reality, often harsh, even dangerous, and pure nature, the beautiful Carpathian mountains with their ‘idyllic’ shepherd culture.

First, I had to research the history, space, and the general situation. Once I had some knowledge, I could start using imagination. As a starting point, I chose the monument “No more tears”, where I did an urban action “Axis Mundi”.

A long time ago, I had a chance to read a book by Mircea Eliade, a Romanian historian of religion and philosopher. At the time, it was quite a revelation for me. Eliade, in the 1950s, introduced the concept of Axis Mundi, which means, in Latin, a connection between Heaven and Earth, the centre of the world. Examples of axis mundi may be found in cultures of shamanic practices, as well as in major religions, or even in technologically advanced urban centers. It can be a tree, a mountain, a tower, a maypole, a totem pole, a church, or an obelisk. In a word, every inhabited area or region has its centre, which is sacred or the most important.

The obelisk “No more tears” in Petrila seemed to be a perfect example of the local Axis Mundi.

In I Have a Dream, you create a Zen Garden on a slag heap, intended to metaphorically reflect the essence of nature. This installation is part of what you call interventions in post-industrial spaces. Can you walk us through the conceptual and visual aspects of this project?

Art can sometimes help as a real tool or a symbolic catalyst in post-industrial regeneration. By the way, it is often used in an instrumental way, in a process of gentrification. For sure, art can improve the aesthetic quality of life, revitalize neglected spaces, or even highlight a local identity.

I HAVE A DREAM was the project which I realised in Katowice, the capital of the Upper Silesia region, an area known for its heavy industry, like mining and metallurgy. The project consisted of the Zen Garden on a mine slag heap and the Silesian Dream-book. The Silesian Dream-book interpreted dream ‘archetypes’, taking into account symbols typical for the culture, nature, and history of the region. Mine, mine slag heap, Spodek (Saucer arena), coal SPA, Silesian dumplings, smog, garden city, palm...these are only some of the 100 entries which you can find in the book. There is also “Zen Garden” as a new symbol collected in the Dream-book.

The Zen Garden was installed on the mine slag heap in Katowice, and built from white gravel, stones, and plants. The spot itself, with the panoramic view, seems to be an ideal place for meditation.

Zen gardens originally are the most minimalistic kind of Japanese gardens, a miniature landscape composed of rocks, moss, pruned trees, bushes, and gravel, which is raked to represent ripples on water. Zen gardens were created at temples of Zen Buddhism, and they were intended to reflect the essence of nature in a metaphorical way. Rocks symbolise mountains, and white gravel represents water. It is an abstract composition of “natural” objects in space, plus harmony and perfection. Zen gardens seem to show human longing for happiness and the lost paradise.

From your perspective, how do art and artistic creation bridge the gap between global societal and political issues and the general public?

I wouldn’t overestimate visual art as a game changer on a global scale, especially since it is usually perceived as something hermetic. Art can touch on some issues and places and deal with, discuss, or play with some stories or social problems. But there are, of course, examples of icons which have some influence on global social imagination. For example, the politically engaged and well-known works and murals of Banksy.

Finally, what message would you like to leave for our readers?

Conversations and discussions on art are usually deadly serious. Whereas art can be just fun. Play and art have something in common. Artists organise ‘play’ using specific techniques, while toys and artistic projects are models of reality. From a deeper perspective, play is very universal and therefore appropriate for public spaces. It is associated with pleasure, freedom, happiness, and childhood, but in fact, it is important at every stage of life. It is not just children who play; adults play as well, not to mention animals. I think it is positive activism, but also a tool that can be used to animate spaces, promote social integration, or even deal with difficult issues.

Maybe we should not expect that art will save the world, but during the turbulent period of time we are approaching, with wars and social upheavals, the function of "playfulness" and creation can be invaluable. Art can be a refuge, a bubble of joy and ‘normality’.

Of course, tragic or overwhelming experiences cannot be neutralised overnight, but playfulness has some disarming power. The word "disarm" comes from “army”, but we can also use it in a different sense; we say, for example, “disarming charm” or “disarming smile”.

Know more about the artist here.

Cover Image:

Axis Mundi 2025. Image courtesy of the artist