Cleaners of Europe is a mobile installation, reflecting upon the existing boarder problem between the post-USSR countries and EU.

The name of the installation symbolizes the role, which country dwellers of the post-soviet play for the EU, while exporting old things from the EU countries and improving the economics of the boarder territories. The saw-cut automobile ironically demonstrates the precise examination, which happens at the border control. I was inspired by the school biology classes, where the complex morphology of an organism could be studied by the body, preserved in formalin. With the automobile I have travelled the classical route of the people, heading for EU shopping tours.

I made stops in Poland at the supermarkets parking lots and major railway junctions, places of concentration of those who travel for shopping. I have communicated with people on the spot, recording their reactions at the installation. After “Shopping”, the installation travelled to the Ministry of Foreign affairs of Poland, carrying a rhetorical question “Do Cleaners of Europe need visas?”. This form of expositional criticism is aimed not only at EU countries, which could unilaterally cancel visas in order to facilitate integration of the post-soviet countries into the western European sociocultural environment, but also at the people from the post-soviet countries, who travel for shopping without realizing the role they play for the EU. Another important moment – is that shopping tours to Europe are just tools for making people’s lives more comfortable, but a goal. Thus there is a misplacement of ideas. In Europe one can access many things – travelling, education, impressions, history, arts, however, we go there for material goods, forgetting the rest.