On Saturday, March 7, artist & U-M Stamps School graduate student Michelle Cieloszczyk hosted a traditional Polish spring equinox ritual—topienie Marzanny [Drowning of Marzanna]—at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, attended by over 100 community members.

Cieloszczyk centers her thesis research on the myth of Marzanna, the mythological goddess of death, disease, and winter. Traditionally during the festival of Jare Gody in Poland, an effigy of Marzanna was built and drowned in a local body of water to banish winter, illness, and misfortunes, as well as to reawaken crops. Through constructing effigies and organizing year-round community rituals, Cieloszcyzk reclaims the figure as a symbol of intergenerational strength, honoring women who heal, endure, and carry collective burdens. She received funding from CCPS last summer to conduct related research in Poland and Lithuania and was proud to bring the ritual to Ann Arbor.

Following an effigy-building workshop, attendees at the Botanical Gardens gathered for a procession around Willow Pond led by Cieloszczyk and her mother, both dressed in red and carrying tall “flag poles” of mountain ash and crabapple necklaces. Behind them was a large group of musicians—orchestral and choral—directed by Antoni Mączka, the Organist of St. Florian Church in Hamtramck. They played three Polish folk songs, with some lyrics adapted to the event. Effigies were then thrown into the water, as a representation of burdens that attendees hoped to release downstream.

“Marzanna has grown in my imagination, as a conduit for complex feminine identities and associations. She is a locus of transformation, deeply tied to seasonal cycles,” commented Cieloszczyk. “I leaned into her, to find her agency, adding tenderness and empathizing with what it’s like to carry all those burdens, to be decaying and vilified. At times I find myself in her.”