The Legality of Space – plein air installation by Ewa Partum

1/6Photo of the action (courtesy of Ewa Partum)

1/6Photo of the action (courtesy of Ewa Partum)

1/6Catalogue pages (courtesy of Ewa Partum)

1/6Catalogue pages (courtesy of Ewa Partum)

1/6Invitation to the event (courtesy of Ewa Partum)

1/6Invitation to the event (courtesy of Ewa Partum)

The installation appeared in an open space between two houses near Freedom Square in the center of Łódź. Ewa Partum exhibited numerous boards with prohibitions: actual traffic signs and others, created by the artist, bare absurd messages—for example, “Prohibiting prohibited” or “Permitting prohibited.” For the opening, invitations were sent out. Since the road-signs had been borrowed officially from the Transportation Department of the city, they were guarded by the police, and some of the passersby took it as an exhibition of traffic signs. During the opening, Partum drove around the square and from the car with a megaphone shouted the captions placed on the tables. The artist published a catalog of the performence in 150 copies. Her installation was not granted any attention from the official Polish art world. The local media reacted with curiosity and compared Partum to Dalí, the Spanish Surrealist, because her work was equally “crazy.”