Janusz Marciniak, Art installation in a swimming pool in Poznan, 2004

Janusz Marciniak is a professor at the University of the Arts in Poznan and a director of the Painting Studio XII, in which painting is viewed as a tool for reflection on the topics important for society such as memory, disease, refugees, the fate of the Poznan synagogue.

The work is a record of an art installation about the history of the New Synagogue in Poznan. In 1941 the Nazis redeveloped the temple and turned it into a swimming pool for the Wehrmacht soldiers. The artist used the space of the former place of worship and the symbolic gestures, such as lighting hundreds of candles in the shape of the Star of David in the pool, to evoke the memory of the sacrum and the absent Jewish community.