(Prints 100x225 cm, 70x158 cm)
Based on the book by Erich Fromm.
“To have or to be” is a book by American psychologist Eric Fromm and a universal dichotomy that opposes consumption and creation, religiosity and spirituality, pleasure and joy, passivity and activity, desire and action, memorization and understanding. At one pole, the pursuit of fleeting and illusory pleasures from the possession of feelings, things, people, knowledge, acquaintances. On the other - the joy of a balanced life in the full realization of oneself as a person and active work for the benefit of society. When we choose to be, we actively work on ourselves to become a good person, friend or girlfriend, husband or wife, father or mother. At the other end of the choice is the desire to have a good reputation, a good child, life partner, boss, neighbor, job and constant dissatisfaction with what we have now. On one side of the scale - the desire to fill your head with as much information as possible, and seem someone. On the other - integration of other people's thoughts into one's own, already existing experience, and one's own active thought process. The list can be continued endlessly, the whole book is about it. My artwork was born long before the start of the war, but I was able to understand the most important thing in it only after the experience gained in the occupation. To really be, and not to seem someone, we begin only when we find the courage to face everything that scares us. When the feeling of fear loses its gravity and ceases to impact our thoughts and actions. And if in peacetime it was possible to harbor illusions and swim in delusions about the motives of our actions, then the war rather quickly showed us the real essence of both those around us and ourselves. In Russian-occupied Kherson, the factor that clearly divided people into real and fake was a factor of danger. In this pitch darkness of pain and suffering, we saw in a matter of days who was the leader, and who only wanted to have power gained through fame, money or social status. Who was ready to remain a human and defend its ideals, and for whom humanity was a weekend outfit for animal essence. At its core, the choice is not between “to have or to be”, but between “to be afraid or not to be afraid”, hiding behind it. Because under any Ego lies the same fear of survival, which takes on socially acceptable and sometimes encouraged forms of behavior. Therefore, the world will not be saved by beauty or love, as Dostoevskiy thought. The world will be saved by courage. Beauty and love will make it happy.
