Ziemia (2018)

Ziemia (“Earth” in Polish) is a public art project created by artist Martynka Wawrzyniak in collaboration with the Greenpoint, community. The project takes the form of a ceramic orb atop a meadow in McGolrick Park, which will be unveiled in June 2018. The orb is glazed with a mixture of clay excavated in Greenpoint and soils from around the world contributed by residents. The artist spent two years reaching out to fellow Greenpointers to invite them to gather soil from locations symbolically representative of their identity. This film is an abbreviated version of a film which documents Wawrzyniak’s journey to Poland in August 2017 to collect soil on behalf of Polish seniors and undocumented immigrants who were unable to personally collect the soil themselves. This film and the fabrication of the ceramic orb were made possible by the generous support of The Polish Cultural Institute in New York.