Palm
Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue - the 15-meter (50-foot) tall artificial palm tree installed in the centre of Warsaw - an installation created by Rajkowska after her trip with Artur Żmijewski to Israel in the spring of 2001. It is an attempt to infuse with Israel's scenery Warsaw's Aleje Jerozolimskie - a street whose name and history, in return, sends the observer back to Israel. In another way, the palm tree refers to a popular idiomatic expression in the Polish language (Polish: palma odbija - literally: "the palm tree sprouts/bounces back") that indicates something unthinkable, outside common understanding, escaping the usual way of reasoning, simply - something idiotic. On the other hand, through the very presence of the palm tree in the middle of Warsaw's centre, it may signify that the commonly accepted way of reasoning does not fit the real world .
Read more about this topic: Joanna Rajkowska
Famous quotes containing the word palm:
“The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legible characters in every quarter of the Old World, and but today, perchance, a new coin is dug up whose inscription repeats and confirms their fame. Some “Judæa Capta,” with a woman mourning under a palm tree, with silent argument and demonstration confirms the pages of history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How did you get in the Navy? How did you get on our side? Ah, you ignorant, arrogant, ambitious—keeping sixty two men in prison cause you got a palm tree for the work they did. I don’t know which I hate worse, you or that malignant growth that stands outside your door. How did you ever get command of a ship? I realize in wartime they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel. But where’d they ever scrape you up?”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“O Love, what hours were thine and mine,
In lands of palm and southern pine;
In lands of palm, of orange-blossom,
Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)