A PERFECT LIFE

A PERFECT LIFE, created by Maciek Szupica in 2011, spanned seven residential buildings on Jana z Kolna Street in Gdańsk. Built in the 1950s for shipyard workers brought to work at the historic Gdańsk Shipyard, these modest housing blocks stood in stark contrast to any vision of a “perfect life.” For this reason, the monumental 9-meter-high lettering of A PERFECT LIFE was deliberately ironic, yet deeply empathetic—a reflection on the history of the place and the people who shaped the working-class identity of Gdańsk for decades.
The project functioned as both a social and artistic intervention, capturing a moment just before an entire fragment of post-shipyard architecture disappeared under the pressure of rapid urban redevelopment. As Szupica stated: “I try to remain attentive to the uncontrolled transformations taking place in the former shipyard areas.” A PERFECT LIFE became not only a mural, but also an act of remembrance and a symbolic farewell to a landscape on the verge of erasure.
The work could never be seen in its entirety from a single viewpoint. It revealed itself only through movement—by tram, train, or car—as successive letters unfolded like frames in a film sequence. The city itself became a moving archive of memory, while architecture served as a carrier of stories that were about to vanish.
A PERFECT LIFE continued themes first explored in Szupica’s earlier project, Out of Control, examining the relationship between collective memory, architecture, and urban disappearance. In both works, art emerged precisel at the moment when a place was about to cease to exist.