Collaboration with Nadiya Petrovska
Concrete, glass, plastic, acrylic, liquid.
Size: 12 x 13 x15 cm
Up to now, Ukraine is the most mined country in the world. According to experts' calculations, it will take 757 years to completely de-mine its territory by traditional methods. In the front-line areas and deep inside the red plate with the skull has become a common sight for us. But the paradox is that our psyche resembles the same minefield, we may any moment explode on. Unfortunately, our loved ones are the people who have to walk through our minefield every day. We carefully place red signs with skulls where someone has already stepped on one, but the nervous system, like a mushroom mycelium, pops up a new mine in different unexpected location. Unfortunately, instead of de-mining, we mostly blame the one who detonated, and, as a rule, we pay back. Because everyone has their own minefield, and over the years of living together with loved ones, if we didn't mine it together, at least, we learned their map well. We know exactly where to trigger the blast. Therefore, it is not surprising that many war-torn veterans choose to escape painful reality, living in a glass ball, comforting themselves with the illusion that if there is no relationships - there is no minefield.
Experienced sappers-psychotherapists will certainly help in this difficult task, but the paradox is that the mining of each individual psyche is so dense, that it will take the same 757 years for its complete de-mining by traditional means. Specialists are needed where it is difficult to cope on our own, but in order to really live a peaceful life, we must learn to de-mine it ourselves. As Ukrainian farmers did. As Buddhists, yogis and artists, putting everything traumatic in a glass ball filled with water.
Experienced sappers-psychotherapists will certainly help in this difficult task, but the paradox is that the mining of each individual psyche is so dense, that it will take the same 757 years for its complete de-mining by traditional means. Specialists are needed where it is difficult to cope on our own, but in order to really live a peaceful life, we must learn to de-mine it ourselves. As Ukrainian farmers did. As Buddhists, yogis and artists, putting everything traumatic in a glass ball filled with water.
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.