In September of 2011, international mural artist Joel Bergner headed to Gdańsk, Poland to lead a community public art project with local youth and adults as part of his Action Ashé! Global Mural Project. Neighborhood residents were interviewed for the project and their stories served as inspiration for the large mural, which featured Joel's unique approach to community-based art projects, "Expressive Group Painting." Joel partnered with the local youth organization Centrum Wspierania Partycypacji Społecznej (Social Participation Support Center), and the project was funded by the European Union and the City of Gdańsk.

All artwork copyright 2011 Joel Bergner. Photography copyright 2011 Kasia Bojarska and Aleks Łyźniak

"Between Two Worlds: The Wrzeszcz Mural”

An accountant by day but anarchist by night; a transgender woman who creates eccentric and creative masks in her small apartment; a dedicated teacher whose free spirit was inspired by a group of traveling circus performers who she once welcomed into her home... These are a few of the many stories from Wrzeszcz, a working-class community in the city of Gdańsk, Poland, on the Baltic Sea...

One of the transgender mask-maker's eccentric masks is painted on the corner of the wall. All of the stories are from local residents who were interviewed for this project.


The teacher dedicated to her students, but also thinking about her friends in the traveling circus who inspired her free spirit. She, like many of the characters, is living "between two worlds."

The entire background consists of art by the children and youth: abstract expressions, drawings, writings, and even foot prints! I call this approach "Expressive Group Painting," which produces a unique aesthetic and is very different to the standard "paint-by-numbers" approach to youth mural projects.
detail: notice the pipe, which we decorated with clothes hangers that we painted. Also notice the local Polish designs created with stencils made especially for this project. The designs were taken from a local historic building.
detail: one of the traveling performers who inspired the teacher
detail: another traveling circus performer


Me and the mural
detail


The accountant-by-day, anarchist-by-night: another character living "between two worlds." Notice that in the background, one of the students painted her version of the famous painting "Scream"by Edvard Munch with the word "Wrzeszcz!" which is the name of the neighborhood, but also means "Scream!" in Polish. 

A common site: an elderly woman looks vigilantly out of her window, not always amused by the characters who go by. Notice the multi-media aspect: a real clothing line comes out of her window with laundry decorated to match the mural.

The laundry line: a common site in the neighborhood. These clothes were covered with plaster and painted for the project.


Portrait of a ship-yard worker, common to this blue collar community. Behind him are two images that anyone in the area would recognize, as they are statues in a nearby park: A joyful girl and a boy playing a tin drum, both characters from the books of the Nobel-prize winning author Günter Grass , one of Wrzeszcz’s most famous native sons.
Portrait of an elderly woman, blind in one of her eyes.

Portrait of this mechanic, whose shop is in the building where the mural was painted. He allowed the use of his garage for storage of supplies and allowed us to use his ladder, so the portrait on the door of his mechanic shop was a gift to him.