Old Photographs Return as Wooden Murals in Gmina Gródek

On a barn in Waliły, former villagers look out at the road again. Arkadiusz Andrejkow's wooden murals were created to invite people to the Siabrouskaja Biasieda festival, and stayed on as the memory of Gmina Gródek.

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Old Photographs Return as Wooden Murals in Gmina Gródek

In Waliły, a few steps from the road through the village, stands a grey barn. Several people look out from its boards: a couple in a dance embrace, a man in a light shirt beside them, and further along someone sitting over scattered hay. The paint does not cover the wood. Every knot and grain shows through it, and from a few metres away the portraits look like old prints enlarged to the size of a wall. I step closer and the image dissolves into streaks, as if it were soaking into the boards.

A wooden mural by Arkadiusz Andrejkow on a grey barn in Waliły: a group of former villagers, with a man in a light shirt on the right Waliły. Figures from old photographs look out from the barn boards (photo: Piotr Zalewa)

Next to it hangs a plaque: the wooden murals of Arkadiusz Andrejkow in Gmina Gródek. A QR code leads to a map of all the works in the area.

Instead of a billboard

The murals were brought to the commune by Magda Łotysz, director of the Communal Culture Centre (GCK) in Gródek. In the summer of 2021 she invited Andrejkow to promote Siabrouskaja Biasieda in a way no poster could. The annual international festival of Belarusian culture draws ensembles from Poland and from across the eastern border to the amphitheatre in Zarzeczany at the end of July. Gmina Gródek is one of the centres of the Belarusian minority in Podlasie, and it has old wooden barns in nearly every village. The artist painted then in Waliły, Radunin and Słuczanka, working from photographs found in the family albums of local residents.

A wooden mural on a barn in Waliły: a man sitting over scattered hay, painted directly on the boards Waliły. The paint lets every knot and grain of the boards show through (photo: Piotr Zalewa)

A year later a mural appeared on the wall of the culture centre in Gródek, showing three singers of the Rozśpiewany Gródek (Razśpiavany Haradok) ensemble: Nina Cywoniuk, Maria Wawreniuk and Aleksandra Jarocka, captured at a concert in Białystok in 1966. Andrejkow painted it in three days.

The Rozśpiewany Gródek mural on the wall of the Communal Culture Centre in Gródek: three singers in folk costume, one with a guitar, red poppies below Gródek. The singers of Rozśpiewany Gródek on the culture centre wall, based on a photograph from 1966 (photo: Piotr Zalewa)

More works followed in 2023: in Zubry, a portrait of Mrs Eugenia and her husband, who died thirty years earlier, on the cottage where she still lives; and a painting at the bus shelter by the park in Gródek. Waiting for the bus there, you sit beside two women walking down a village road. They were photographed years ago by local photographer Konstanty Kuźmin, and Andrejkow signed the wall with the date 2023.

A mural at the bus shelter in Gródek: two women in coats walking down a village road, wooden buildings behind them, signed Andrejkow 2023 Gródek. The bus shelter by the park: two residents from a photograph by Konstanty Kuźmin (photo: Piotr Zalewa)

"What matters to us is that Arkadiusz paints people, because people are the heart of this commune," the director of the culture centre said. The festival passes every year; the murals stay: a gallery of memory scattered across the villages, where admission is always free.

The Silent Memorial

Arkadiusz Andrejkow was born in 1985 in Sanok. He started out in graffiti, then studied art education at the vocational college in Sanok and painting at the Faculty of Art of the University of Rzeszów. In 2017, with a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, he launched Cichy Memoriał (the Silent Memorial): on the barns and wooden houses of the Podkarpacie region he painted former residents, working from family album photographs. The project was meant to close within a year. It continues to this day, counts more than a hundred works across Poland, and its Bieszczady locations even have a printed map. The artist himself admits that Podlasie has become one of the regions closest to him.

The technique: semi-transparent layers of paint applied straight onto the weathered boards, without priming, so that the wood remains part of the picture. The portrait ages together with the wall it lives on.

The last frame of this trip I took in Słuczanka, a few minutes' drive from Waliły: on the dark board cladding of the village community hall, Mrs Ania gazes into the distance, leaning on a fence. That is how the commune's newspaper described the work when it was painted in 2021.

A wooden mural by Arkadiusz Andrejkow in Słuczanka: Mrs Ania with folded arms, in profile, on a wall of brown boards Słuczanka. Mrs Ania on the boards of the village community hall (photo: Piotr Zalewa)

The QR-code plaques hanging beside the works lead to a map of all the commune's wooden murals, so you can lay out a trail of your own.

A woman reads an information plaque about Arkadiusz Andrejkow's wooden murals, next to a portrait of a man on barn boards in Waliły Waliły. The plaque with a QR code leads to a map of the wooden murals of Gmina Gródek (photo: Piotr Zalewa)

Practical information

  • You will find Andrejkow's works in Gmina Gródek in Waliły, Radunin, Słuczanka, Zubry and in Gródek itself (the culture centre wall and the bus shelter by the park).
  • Plaques with a QR code and a map of the commune's murals hang beside some of the works.
  • The Siabrouskaja Biasieda festival takes place every year at the end of July in the amphitheatre in Zarzeczany.
  • View the works from the road or with the owners' permission: most were created on private barns and houses.

Where to look next

We document these wooden murals because they are a record of village memory that lives out in the open and will not last forever. If you know the story of anyone portrayed in Gmina Gródek, write to us.