Joanna Rajkowska / The Peterborough Child
On Saturday 20th June, 2-4pm, at Wysing Arts Centre, there will be a special event to launch the permanent installation of Joanna Rajkowska’s public work, The Peterborough Child.
The Peterborough Child was started in 2012 and has travelled to Poland and back again and inspired both a film and a great deal of unwonted controversy. That controversy led it to remain mothballed in storage in Peterborough for nearly three years.
The work has the appearance of a staged archaeological dig; Rajkowska describes it as ‘a chakra – a place of focused, accumulated energy’. At the centre of that energy is a tiny replica skeleton of a thirty week old foetus. An emotive image, but one intended as a response to the location of Peterborough as a site of ancient graves. After nearly three years in storage, Wysing Arts Centre has been given custodianship of The Peterborough Child.