Whose history?

Joshua Schwartz
Billboard International
March – December 2012

Whose History?

Whose History?, is a year-long site-specific artwork and curatorial project by artist Joshua Schwartz. The project uses an advertising billboard in the city of Oswiecim, Poland as an exhibition space for a series of artists to present works that confront the city’s conflicted past. The exhibition opens on March 22, 2012 and continues throughout the year with a new artist’s work set to appear on the billboard every five weeks.

For more information please visit
www.thebillboardgallery.com

Exhibitions:
22.3-25.4 Joshua Schwartz
26.4-30.5 Yael Bartana
31.5-4.7 Julien Berthier
5.7-8.8 Joanna Rajkowska
9.8-12.9 Thomas Mailaender
13.9-17.10 Adrien Tiritiaux
18.10-21.11 Martin Roth
22.11-26.12 Daniel Bozhkov

Whose History? is the first presentation in an ongoing series of public curatorial projects by Billboard International.

Project History

The site for this project was carefully chosen, based on Oświęcim’s complex history, its unique present state of affairs and difficult yet optimism-inspiring future. The city’s eight hundred year-long history has been overshadowed by events that took place during the Second World War, and for the last seventy-two years this area has become known around the world by its German name, Auschwitz.

Within the last three decades the city has become a popular tourist destination, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. While visitors typically stay just long enough to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, the local residents endeavour to draw visitors’ attention also to other places, which would enable them to leave their trauma behind and move on.

Positioned centrally in between Oświecim’s Market Square and the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Billboard International symbolically links the tragic past with hope for the future.
Whose History? will offer residents, visitors, and passers-by a chance to contemplate how the selected artists’ works function in relation to its surroundings.

Billboard International

BI is an ongoing venture aimed at curating exhibitions and presenting artists’ works in wide range of contexts, mediums, venues and locations worldwide.
BI focuses on site-oriented projects - encouraging participating artists to develop concepts which focus on a specific locations’ role in social interaction on both a micro and macro level.

The Project’s Director

Joshua Schwartz is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in New York City. His visual art practice makes use of a variety of media -ranging from photography to sculpture to performance, allowing each individual artwork’s conceptual structure to determine its form. His projects often involve developing works that exist outside of the gallery context.
Joshua has created public works for the City of Baltimore, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey and the MtyMx music festival. Billboard International Oswiecim location is the culmination of Joshua’s ongoing collaboration with the city and its various artistic and cultural outlets.

More on Joshua Schwartz can be found by visiting
www.joshuaschwartz.net