“Kompot” is a comic book published by Kultura Gniewu (ISBN 978-83-60915-24-0). This bilingual (polish – hebrew) anthology is a project connected with the Polish Year in Israel (2008), organized by The Adam Mickiewicz Institute. On early autumn of 2007 in Lodz, Warsow and Tel Aviv 10 artists took part in workshops: Zeev Engelmayer, Daniel Goldstein, Rachely Rotner, Yaron Niski, Amitai Sandy, Krzysztof Ostrowski, Michał „Śledziu” Śledziński, Łukasz Mieszkowski, Jakub Szczęsny and me, Joanna Karpowicz. The result of our cooperation you can see in the book, all comic stories are inspired by the reality of Poland and Israel. “Kompot” means the same in polish and hebrew – sweet drink made of fruits.
“Lucky picture” is my short story in “Kompot”. It is about magical thinking and real business skills. In Poland, some people still believe that this particular painting (a Jew counting money) will make them rich (true story, you can buy pictures like that in a small galleries with souvenirs). After all – aren’t all Jews millionaires? This story refers to us, Polish people.

Here is how the curators: Katarzyna Wielga and Marta Wójcicka, speak about the project: “When almost two years ago we started to correspond with our Israeli friends about possible cooperation – comic book and workshop, we were only certain of one thing – we really wanted to step out of the stereotypes. The political atmosphere after the II WW in Poland, for a long time was not allowing for a free dialog between Poland and Israel. The efforts were made to wipe out the meaning of the jewish influence on the polish culture, on our common heritage. […] We wanted to take a look from a new perspective, that is why we started from the analysis of those old, common stereotypes and devoted workshops to break them. During our cooperation fascinations were born, a lot of arguments raised about the history of both countries and also, about personal stories. There was pain, but also joy of writing and drawing together. The book, “Kompot”, shows how important is live contact of Polish and Israeli people – contact through culture, creativity, commenting the world”.