Once a year Polish cemeteries are flooded with flowers and candles - some burning with fire, others battery-powered, meant to burn forever. On this day, the living out-number the dead. Some rush between the graves of their departed loved ones, others linger on. For a short time, the emptiness is filled, stalls appear in front of the cemeteries, religious songs are sung, and quiet conversations can be heard everywhere. The characteristic scent of chrysanthemus wafts through the air.

The artist romanticises the Day of the Dead and the associated rituals, but she also notices certain superficiality - perhaps even remissness In the way our ancestors are remembered. She wants to know whether the dead, like romantic wraiths, haunt us in our dreams, demanding an offering, the closure of a ritual, the appropriate paraphernalla? Our attitude to them is inherently ambivalent. Beneath the appearances of human relationships and memories stretches a subterranean realm Inhabited by the ghastly and Intangible "something" that transcends the material world while remaining Inescapably bound to it through the process of biological decomposition, trapped in the Incessant and merciless circulation of matter. Similarly ambiguous were the bonfires lit on graves in pre-Christian Slavic traditions - on the one hand, they acted as signposts for souls, on the other, they were meant to protect the living from untold horrors, purging the air of pestilence called Death