Collaboration with Nadiya Petrovska
Concrete, glass, plastic, acrylic, liquid.
For some people it might seem distant and weird, for many Ukrainians, it is a reality. Especially for those, who live in the front-line zone. My house in Kherson was hit recently, the house where Nadia lives was hit several months ago. And the house where my parents live was hit at the beginning of last year. My father went into the kitchen when a piece of steel broke the window glass and stuck in the wall where he had been sitting with his laptop just a moment before. In order to live in conditions where your life can end at any moment, you need faith, acceptance of the reality and an understanding of how to deal with it, or fear, lethargy and a sense of helplessness. We fill the inner space of our globe ourselves. The plastic film we taped the windows with at the beginning of the full scale invasion will not save from reality. It is what it is, and until we are ready to accept it as such, we will not get out of the bubble in which we placed ourselves and our expectations from the world many years ago. It gives only the illusion of security and control. From the center of the globe, it seems that the world moves around us, people behind the glass are only interesting in how they treat us and what we can get from them, we perceive them and all events as a Facebook or Instagram feed, putting "likes" with our attention or ignorance. We can refine our idealized glass world for a long time, we are its emperors, until a sufficiently brutal piece of reality breaks into. War or disease is highly effective in bringing to mind, that's a fact. So while the world sleeps, I hope art will wake it up before the Third World War does.
Series concept
The gift that no one would want to receive.
It is unlikely that anyone in their right mind would want to receive such a gift, but unfortunately, our fate and nervous system do just that and leave us no other choice. War is traumatic. It will end someday, but triggers - certain objects, sounds, and places - will periodically return us to the feelings and states that we experienced and are still experiencing. They settle on the bottom of our psyche like a heavy block of concrete and will lie there as long as they are connected to intense negative emotions and feelings. Until we have rethought the events that have happened and understood what has changed in our personality and values for the better. Until the traumatic memories fit into neat row of blocks in the foundation of the structure that we have not yet become. It is impossible to run away from triggers, they can and should be discharged, before inherited by children.