Of Stone, Wood, Light, and What Kamień, Drewno, Światło I Co
Photography
2024
Winning Project of Art Lives Here Artist Residency and has joined the collection of Leonardo Hotels, Warsaw (PL)
“To rebuild a homeland, we started with stones and wood. In the end, we brought the light back to the city.”
Warsaw is a city where every stone and shadow carries memory. During his residency, interdisciplinary artist Tianjun Li created Of Stone, Wood, Light, and What, a photographic series reflecting on ruin, survival, and the human capacity to rebuild.
The work draws inspiration from the mural KAMIEŃ I CO (Stone and What) painted on the remains of a tenement house in the Wola district. Warsaw, almost entirely destroyed during the Second World War, was rebuilt through collective will. Today, glass towers rise beside preserved ruins, forming a fragile but powerful coexistence of past and present. For Li, this became a framework to consider not only Warsaw’s resilience but also the broader question of how people, across times and places, face loss and reimagine home.
Fragments from the city: stones from construction sites, weathered wood, flickering lights, are layered with archival material and contemporary scenes. These elements act as symbolic building blocks, forming a cityscape where memory and imagination intertwine. The ruins become more than remnants; they become sites of dialogue, carrying both pain and the possibility of transformation.
The story of a city destroyed and rebuilt is universal. Today we continue to witness cities shattered by conflict, and people struggling to reclaim their homes. The project is about the enduring human drive to rebuild, to seek light after darkness.
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Stone Pattern, Boy, and the Uprising Old Town Moon
Brick, Construction Materials in the Old Town, and the Skyscrapers
Children and the Giant Wood
Fallen Tree and the Shadow of a Girl
People in the City at Midnight, and a Milky Way of Stone
Of Stone, Wood, Light, and What was the winning project of the 2024 Art Lives Here Artist Residency by Leonardo Hotels in Warsaw (PL) and is now part of its collection.