Polish artist Miroslaw Balka (b. 1958) is known for his installations, in which he use hair, soap, ashes and maggots. These materials give an uneasy association to the human body in the often very minimal pieces. The works are minimal, but also conceptual in their way of dealing with bodily and historic traces. Miroslaw Balka's works often have a connection to real places and events. Second World War and Poland's part in it is a recurrent theme in Balka's art, which is never cheap or mawkish, but subtle and full of emotion.
In 2006 Miroslaw Balka visited the workshop and made the photo lithographic series A Crossroads in A. The four lithographs are named North, South, East and West according to the angle from which the photographic original is made. The four lithographs portray four views from the same road in Auschwitz. All traces revealing the identity of the place or the presence og human beings are transformed into white, empty gaps where only the trees, sky and ground are kept intact. Despite the horrific historic location Miroslaw Balka succeeds in questioning how the Holocaust should be remembered or even represented in a both terrifying and beautiful way. To the same theme and from a photographic image from Auschwitz Balka made the photolithograph B in 2007.
