The artist Alicja Biala and architect Iwo Borkowicz have inaugurated TOTEMY in Poznan (Poland), a series of giant sculptures expressing the current state of the environmental crisis.
Located in the heart of Poznan (Poland) and each standing 9 meters, they all visualize something about the relationship between humanity and nature. Their shapes, colors, and textures correspond with different statistics, in such a way that they offer an immersive architectural experience through vibrant direct confrontation on a daily basis. With as much precision as possible they try to reflect data provided by environmental studies. Local carpenters, politicians, students, activists, and other community members helped in the project, raising the columns artisanally.
The sculptures are under MVRDV’s Baltyk building, in a public space instead of in museums or galleries. In this way, they have a larger audience.
The pieces each have a QR code explaining their seemingly merely abstract forms. One of them, for example, gives information about deforestation through its two large volumes, one of these representing the size of the world’s annual loss of forests and the other depicting the size of Poland.
