Marta Michalowska

Fragile Monuments: Postscript for Gdansk Shipyard, 2023

At the time when democracy faces threats across the world, this series revisits the Gdansk Shipyard where the end of communism in Europe had begun in the 1980s. The striking workers of the then Lenin Shipyard demanded the right to independent trade unions and set in motion a largely bloodless revolution against the Soviet puppet regime ruling Poland since the end of WWII. Transitions in other countries of central and eastern Europe followed, leading to the enlargement of the EU a quarter of century later.

Meanwhile, the Gdansk Shipyard has declined, and the city of Gdansk has encroached on its historic grounds. The site is undergoing redevelopment with many buildings demolished. The hoardings demarcating the building sites are adorned with photographs of iconic cranes of the shipyard. These cranes are one of the most recognisable images of Gdansk, and Poland, even if the Berlin Wall has ultimately become the symbol of the dismantling of the Iron Curtain. The view over the remnants of the industrial relic is promoted by property developers as desirable to the future occupants of flats and offices raising from the grounds of the Shipyard. 

The series is a counterpart of a body of work looking at the declining yet still operating shipbuilder – Gdansk Shipyard (2006-2008) – together forming an archive of the historic site in transition.