Semiotyka narracji architektonicznej Jacka Sala w mieście Kielce

Abstract

The article is an anthropological interpretation of the monument White/Wash II – a Memorial for the Victims of the 1946 Pogrom designed by Jack Sal and erected in Kielce, the town where the pogrom took place. The analysis includes functions and communicational relationships of the monument in the urban architecture and artistic space. The cognitive process revealed that the image of a house is an axiological center of the artist’s architectural narrative. Thus, the polymorphism and polysemy of the monument are perceptible. The monument allusively invokes the archetype of a house, the symbol of the Jewish “shtetl”. It also assumes the form of a symbolic memory sign – a medallion – with an outline of the house and the backstreet where the pogrom took place in the postwar history of the Jewish nation. Jack Sal’s monument develops an innovative language of public discourse, and being a cultural text, it creates a code that indicates the values which are manifested in the urban space – living and building – representing the idea of a family nest, an existential expression of a human community. The artist’s symbolic narrative refers to the subjective, personal consciousness of viewers and their hermeneutic intuition which allows for recognizing the values common to people of different nations, times and cultures.