{Art Viewpoints} – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

• The First Transport, an installation by Wojciech Korkuć presented at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, is a continuation of an artistic project that began in 2020 following a conversation with Barbara Wojnarowska-Gautier, former prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp. In response to Mrs. Gautier’s request, Korkuć decided to work towards restoring the memory of the first transport of Poles to the largest death factory in the history of the world. On 14 June 1940, the Germans deported a group of 728 Poles to the recently established Auschwitz concentration camp. The transported group consisted mainly of young people: scouts, students, and members of underground independence organizations. Among them were also soldiers who fought in the September campaign and were trying to reach Hungary to join the Polish Army that was forming there. They were transported by trains from the prison in Tarnów, unaware of the purpose of the journey. At the railway station in Kraków, they heard joyful announcements about the German occupation of Paris (met with no resistance from the French). In subsequent years, thousands of similar transports took place, but this very first one is the subject of Korkuć’s artistic vision.

{Art Viewpoints} is a cycle of guided tours in Polish of the exhibitions held at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art where you may view each exhibition several times in different ways – each time from a different perspective: from the perspective of a curator, artist, educator or a volunteer involved in the organisation of the exhibition as well as from the perspective of an architect, journalist, anthropologist, linguist... and many others. The number of perspectives is not limited – the only limitation is the duration of a given exhibition.