Magdalena Abakanowicz

WARSAW, Poland—Magdalena Abakanowicz has, since the late 1960s, gained a reputation as one of the most respected of European sculptors. Though Polish by birth and still based in Warsaw, she has made immensely popular public installations of her work all over the world, from Italy and Germany to Japan, South Korea, Canada and throughout the United States.

Her work tends to be enormous in scale and ranges through abstraction to semi-abstraction, although her best-known works are probably her accumulations of human figures in public spaces.

A remarkable example of this sort of work is the recently installed Agora, situated in downtown Chicago. For that project, Abakanowicz posed 106 giant, headless figures (measuring 9 feet in height) at the entrance to Grant Park, where they present an austere and unsettling viewing experience that is meant to be simultaneously inspirational.

The 76-year-old sculptor spoke to ArtInfo about the metaphorical intentions of her work, as well as the international response to her installations.

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Magdalena, in the past you’ve made work that has been political, social and spiritual. Are these the sort of concerns that have informed the making of Agora?

Our lives on this planet are determined geographically, historically and politically. All of this is reflected in art. The hand-sculpted cast-iron figures in Agora are meant to look as though they are emerging from the soil. They are organic and suggest where we belong. They also relate to how people live in my distant country, where the realities of nature is still important.

How literally did you intend the title, Agora?

An “agora” was a large plaza in old Greek towns that was intended for public meetings and discussions about philosophy, politics, law and poetry. I’ve only used Agora as a title, because it carries many metaphorical meanings which we can feel through our imagination, but which we do not need to verbalize.

You’ve talked before about art being able to address issues that can’t be expressed in words. Do you think, then, that it can have a direct political effect?

Art is a language. It derives from personal sensitivities, from personal interpretations of experience and from a personal determination to convey these things to others.

I feel there’s a difference between art and information: art remains mankind’s most astonishing activity, as it derives from a constant mental struggle between wisdom and madness, and between dreams and reality. Art does not solve problems, but it makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to see, and our brains to imagine.

The figures in my work speak metaphorically about the overpopulated planet, about the danger of brainless masses worshipping on command or hating on command, and about solitude in multitude.

You’ve mentioned also that the Agora figures having similarities with nature. Can you say a little bit more about that?

These figures suggest the similarity between the tree trunk and the human trunk, and the bark fallen off a tree, or the rags fallen of a mummy. They also suggest similarities between all of nature’s creatures. My human figures are not literal. Each of my headless figures is an individual, with its particular expression and character. They are similar in general shape, but different in details. In this group of 106 figures there is the density of the forest or the crowd and the movement of the wind. There is an inexplicable dialogue between the mute and the expressive.

The way you talk about your work suggests that you aspire to universal comprehension. But how is your work interpreted in different places?

In my own country, children will climb up the cast-iron figures of a group that I have installed in a park there. Their parents sit around the figures eating lunch. But I also consider my art as communication with people, especially in countries like Japan where I do not speak the language. I remember that in Hiroshima more than 6,000 people signed a petition to the city authorities asking them to commission a sculpture from me for the city. I did not meet those people, we did not speak, but they learned many things from looking at my art. I made the sculpture they desired.