Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz spent much of her life with her home country under Communist rule by the Soviet Union. The regime emphasized the collective over the individual. This experience is reflected in her artworks in the following way:

Magdalena Abakanowicz was an artist doing mostly sculptured work.

Many of her pieces of art are multiple repeated and similar sculptures of people, usually standing near one another.

As she grew up under the Communist regime which repressed individuality and preferred collective expressions of identity, her work reflects that in a form of presence these anonymous, similar, unidentifiable figures representing mass humanity.

These figures without faces, expressions or distinctiveness reference this cultural collectivism of the regime.