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One of my favourite pieces of public art anywhere.
At the junction of Piłsudskiego and Świdnicka Streets, we come across a group of fourteen life-sized fossilized forms. It is a monument of anonymous passers-by, whose author is Polish artist Jerzy Kalin. Among them, we find people similar to ourselves. There is a man in a hat, a mother pushing a stroller, a man carrying a bicycle inner tube, a woman with an umbrella, an old lady with a bag full of shopping. The cast bronze figures seem to descend below the surface of the sidewalk separating the busy streets and come up on the other side. Seven people stand on one side of the road descending into the sidewalk and seven people ascend from the other side. The people closest to the curb are submerged in the sidewalk to the waist with only their heads and torsos exposed. Other figures are immersed only to the knees, while still others wade only their feet in the concrete slabs. It is an invisible passage, a symbol of the changes that have occurred in Poland between the time of communism and the time of democracy. The bustle of the streets surround - the voices of passers-by, the roar of car engines, the smell of the city. Feelings so similar to those before 1989, and yet still quite different today.
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