Since it went up in 2012, a rainbow sculpture in Warsaw’s Plac Zbawiciela has been vandalized numerous times. But now a new, indestructible monument has been installed, one that can’t be burned down because it’s made of light and water. The fact that the artist found a high-tech way to thwart the arsonists is thrilling, but it’s worth noting that the original piece wasn’t intended as an LGBT symbol at all. Artist Julita Wojcik really just meant it to be a rainbow, which can represent any number of things. Quoth she: “The colors the rainbow on flags used in the past symbolized a new era, hope, social change, world peace and even, in Poland in the past, cooperation.” But Poland’s version of the Alt Right decided that it could be a gay symbol and thus had to be destroyed. In doing so, they created an LGBT monument where before there was none, and an indestructible one at that.
