Monika Zawadzki offers a memorial devoted to a washing machine and a fridge. The artist installs emblems of everyday life into the sequence of shapes comprising the heroic narration of monuments in the city space. As opposed to majority of monuments which relate to history, decisive moments and figures from the past, Zawadzki’s focus is on presence, she commemorates lasting. Laundry is not a project one can start and finish with the feeling of something being completed. Washed clothes will get dirty again and re-inserted into the washing machine. A similar thing is with the fridge – its work never ends.

A washing machine and a fridge are two monumental, powerful, geometrical forms present in the private space and in everyday lives of the majority of people. These two massive cuboids inhabit almost every home. If we do not associate their presence with a mysterious monolith from “2001: Space Odyssey” or with Kaaba, it is probably just because we got used to them so much.

In the work “A washing machine and a fridge”, monuments of everyday life are transferred from private into public space. This is a memorial for repeatable tasks, stubborn battle with entropy and disintegration that need to be held back everyday – monument of elements of daily life that fill in our existence much tighter than it would be done by any history, no matter how much it would stir our imagination.

A washing machine and a fridge, apart from their household origin and monumental form, have a common interior. We put things inside, we entrust them to the cuboids hoping that they will help us rule the world of things. Washing machine is used to purify. The fridge protects against disintegration, slows down time thus acting to the benefit of chaos. By erecting memorials to these cuboids, Zawadzki deprives them of their function but supports the idea which they serve.