Monika Drożyńska: Heall

The installation Heall consists of three flags embroidered with the word ‘heall’, placed in the passageway between the MOCAK building and Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory, a branch of the Museum of Kraków. It is a transitional space between the realm of contemporary art and the space commemorating the Holocaust and survival.

As the starting point for the work, the artist took the English word ‘hell’ to evoke the extremes of violence, destruction and memory inscribed in the history of the place. The addition of the letter ‘a’ transforms ‘hell’ into ‘heall’, in which three meanings overlap: ‘hell’, ‘heal’ and ‘all’.

The letter ‘a’, as the first letter of the alphabet, symbolises the beginning and initiation. In the Hebrew tradition, it corresponds to alef, which opens the Torah, a sign of unity and silence preceding creation, and in Greek culture, alpha means the beginning and, together with omega, the fullness of existence. Shaped as a triangle, the capital letter ‘A’ in Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, and Christian and alchemical symbolism of geometry signifies the active principle, fire and spirit, the movement from matter to idea, and the moment of transition from the absolute to creation, in which body, soul, and spirit are united.

Therefore, adding the letter ‘a’ to the word ‘hell’ becomes a gesture of initiation that introduces a new beginning into a seemingly final state and opens up the possibility of change. It is a sign of hope emerging in the midst of despair. The repetition of the word on the three flags reinforces its meaning, introducing a rhythm and a gesture addressed to everyone without exception.

The installation  Heall is an anti-war manifesto and a call for peace. It has been created at a time of ongoing armed conflicts: the war in Ukraine, Russia’s imperial and fascist ambitions, and the systematic relativisation of statements about genocide in Gaza. The silence surrounding the war in Sudan, which is the site of the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, remains incomprehensible and disturbing.

Heall functions in the public space as a determined gesture of opposition to the normalisation of war, violence, and indifference – a reminder of our shared responsibility and the need for healing.

Monika Drożyńska – visual artist, embroiderer, activist, PhD in Arts. In her artistic practice she uses photography, video and installation; her key medium, however, remains embroidery, which she treats as a writing technique and a tool for working with language. Her projects focus on the analysis of language present in public space, its transformations and the role it plays in social, political and identity relations. She is considered a pioneer in the use of embroidery techniques in contemporary art and in working with fabric in public space. Winner of the Polityka Passport Award 2024. She has collaborated with, among others, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, the Contemporary Museum in Wrocław, Nomus – New Museum of Art in Gdańsk, and the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Her works can be found in the collections of, among others, Bunkier Sztuki in Kraków, the National Museum in Kraków, MOCAK, the National Museum in Kiev, and Lentos Kunstmuseum in Austria.