bringing back
small sacral architecture
When driving through the traditional rural regions of Polish Mazovia crowded with the remains of post-war residential housing, I started to notice small niches appearing on front walls of almost every house I laid my eyes on. While some of them were hiding figures of saints, plenty of them were empty. Intrigued by the integral signs of small sacral architecture, but also its perceptible vanishing, I have engaged in conversation with inhabitants of the regional villages which consequently turned into a documentation of these precious architectural acts of faith, and an interactive project by means of light projection. The first part of the book consists of a collection of photographs which I shot while exploring the informal devoutness of the region. With the help and involvment of the locals, who not only allowed me photograph their special designs, but also shared their personal stories connected to the creation of the nitches. The next part is a documentation of an initiative to re-enact and situate a nitche within a new context, to merge old with new, tradition with innovation. The book is supplemented with a layout allowing the viewer to picture how „small sacrall architecture� would fit into the contemporary architectural landscape, as the residental housing is currently rewriting some old conventions, for instance, modern adaptations of the classic gable roof style. The booklet was designed to enable applying this traditional custom of incorporating a niche into a house structure, by its juxtapposition with a contemporary example of a residential house. The idea is to shuffle the loose picture between the transparent pages.
Wall shrines were believed to provide protection of the houses and its residents. This function was specifically attributed to the statues of saints, most commonly St. Mary, considered as patrons taking care of the families. On the other hand, when asked about the niches in the gables of their houses, many residents expressed uniformly, „that was the way houses were built back then�, implying more of an architectual trend and style adopted by a group, rather than a religious act. Over the recent decades, usually in relation to the house renovations, lots of built-in shrines have been taken apart. The tradition is gradually fading as an inevitable consequence of civilization’s development and modernization of architecture and culture. This is why it is important to draw attention to their singularity, think of a way to bring them back and locate within the modern culture, before their phenomenon completely disappears.
According to the older generation of the community, in order to create a niche, they would remove few bricks from the front facade during the construction of the house. Nowaday’s, new home owners don’t include niches in their construction projects, hence the craft of small sacral architecture can’t be recovered in a traditional way.
How can one restore this tradition and incorporate wall shrines back into public scenery in a non-destructive way, without vandalizing and infringing someone’s private property?
In an attempt to re-enact these traditional architectual designs, I will be using modern projection techniques. The shrine will be projected onto the building which meets its predestination: 1. Its application in a residental facility, precisely in a house. 2. Its function as a protector of the householders. This way, the contemporary, which once gave up on these instances of small sacral architecture, incorporates them through one of its emerging practices, falling under the categories of digital graffiti/ street projections, which, similarly to graffiti and other forms of street art, if performed in a public space and in its traditional way by the artist, would appear as an act of vandalism. A Nursing Home was chosen as a display surface for the light projection of a shrine, as it complies with the concept of a home and guardianship, and with its elderly householders in need of being protected and taken care of at such fragile point in life. This allows to create a contemporary alternative for a shrine that acknowledges country’s past.
„The niche has been here from the beginning. Many years ago, I wanted to change the light bulb and accidentally damaged the statue while removing it, because it is very fragile. We keep it at home ever since. I will put it in place one day” „The Virgin Mary has been with me from the beginning and will stay with me until the end” „The shrine might be here to protect us, but Satan still lives in the house”
„It was my personal intention because I am a child of the Mother of God” „I just feel like a child of the Mother of God, when I talk to her, I feel that I am talking to my mother. It is very important to me and that’s why she is here” „We really wanted a second child, for many years it was not working out for us. In the end, we have built a shrine in this intention and quickly got pregnant. It may be the treatment or the Mother of God, we will never know, but we cultivate the chapel to this day”