Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue (Polish: Pozdrowienia z Alej Jerozolimskich) is a site-specific artwork in the form of a life-size artificial date palm. It was designed by Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska, and is located on the Charles de Gaulle Roundabout (Rondo gen. Charles’a de Gaulle’a), where Aleje Jerozolimskie intersects with Nowy Świat street in the Polish capital of Warsaw. It was erected on December 12, 2002.
The work was intended by Rajkowska to draw attention to "the absence of the Jewish community in Poland" by highlighting and challenging "the invisibility of the street’s name."[1] The project was thus intended as a social experiment,[2] an anti-monument that metaphorically brings the “vanished Jews back into the landscape of contemporary Poland”.[3]
Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue has become one of the most iconic art projects realised in Poland's public space after 1989 and its meaning has continuously evolved and extended. Since its inception, the palm tree location has become a prominent site for political and social activists, including women, nurses, LGBTQ+ communities, environmental activists, protesters against the war in Ukraine, and other groups.
- ^ "Greetings From Jerusalem Avenue — Joanna Rajkowska". www.rajkowska.com.
- ^ Joanna Rajkowska, Where the Beast is Buried. Winchester, UK & Washington, USA: Zero Books 2013. P268
- ^ Uilleam Blacker, Spatial Dialogues and Holocaust Memory in Contemporary Polish Art: Yael Bartana, Rafał Betlejewski and Joanna Rajkowska. The Open Arts Journal 3, 2014. P173.