Collaboration with Nadiya Petrovska
Concrete, glass, plastic, acrylic, liquid.
Size: 12 x 13 x15 cm
Ukraine is currently the most heavily mined country in the world. Experts estimate it will take 757 years to completely demine its territory. The red signs with skulls are a common sight, yet a paradox exists: our psyche is a minefield just like the land. We may explode at any moment. Our loved ones are the ones who must navigate this field daily. We carefully mark spots where someone has already stepped on a mine, but our nervous system, like a mushroom mycelium, sprouts a new one in an unexpected place.
Instead of demine-ing, we often blame the one who detonated it and retaliate. Because everyone has their own minefield, and over years of living with loved ones, we learn to navigate each other's maps well. We know exactly where to trigger an explosion. This is likely why many war-torn veterans choose to escape painful reality, living in a snow globe with the illusion that without relationships, there is no minefield.
Psychotherapists, the experienced sappers of the mind, can certainly help. But the paradox is that the dense mining of a psyche would take 757 years to clear by traditional means. Specialists are needed for the difficult work, but to truly find peace, we must learn to demine ourselves—just as Ukrainian farmers have done. Just as Buddhists, yogis, and artists do, by containing all the trauma in a snow globe filled with water.
Series concept
The gift that no one would want to receive.
No one in their right mind would ever want this gift. Yet, fate and our nervous systems grant it to us, leaving us with no other choice. War is a profound trauma. While the conflict will eventually end, the triggers—certain objects, sounds, and places—will repeatedly pull us back into the raw feelings and states we once experienced. These memories settle at the bottom of our psyche like a heavy block of concrete, lying dormant as long as they are connected to intense negative emotions. We cannot move forward until we have reconsidered these events and understood how they have reshaped our personalities and values for the better. Only then can these memories be transformed into the foundational blocks of the person we are yet to become. Triggers cannot be escaped; they must be confronted and discharged so they are not inherited by our children.