Collaboration with Nadiya Petrovska
Concrete, glass, plastic, acrylic, liquid.
Size: 12 x 13 x15 cm
In most aspects societies are arranged in the same way as living organisms. Some of them are more complicated than others, but finally, through all the history of mankind we carefully study and recreate this wonderful creation of which we are a part. As a society, since the beginning of the war with Russia we have come a long way from oncology and immunodeficiency to auto-aggression. People have been studying psychosomatics, - the relationship between the human body and psyche, for many years now. The weakness of the immune system and resulting neoplasms are usually associated with our inability to realize our own identity, our personal boundaries, our true self, to separate our own from someone else's. Autoimmune diseases are quite often the result of autoaggression - an attack on our true self, when it is not what we would like it to be. Why am I telling this? If this prolonged horror therapy was intended to reach its climax, it must be somewhere here.
Indeed, for the whole world, Ukraine has become a mirror in which its true essence is reflected. Both individuals and groups, peoples and organizations. Let's finally take an honest look at it ourselves. Perhaps we will not have a second chance to do this. Perhaps this is the most important thing that should have happened to us in this war.
Do you see a man in this glass bubble? This is our collectively created image of an ideal Ukrainian - fearless and endless in his unity, an iron hero-freedom fighter, as mythical as unattainable. Do you see how, now that he is increasingly aware that he is not living up to his ideal, our societal immune system is using the power of laws, media, police, and the military to combat this unacceptable reality? But it already happened before. I am not talking about the USSR. The first time we did it was in early childhood, when our physical survival was totally dependent on the love of our parents and we divided ourselves and the surrounding world into "good" and "bad" according to their models. Subsequently, following this pattern, we have consistently done this in peaceful times, on the way to our successful success or spiritual enlightenment. In the same way, hiding from the real, but insufficient, self, from our true desires and capabilities, and, as a result, from our real personal boundaries.
Probably, the bubble is already defending itself: it devalues me, calls me a Russian spy, calls it a hostile IPSO, madness or nonsense, raises many logical arguments. Do not turn away from him and do not close your eyes. Go through that glass. Propaganda, as sweet as sugar, allows us to instantly raise our self-esteem above with righteous anger, but also to whiten our false personality from the dirt of reality: to give our enemy everything that is unacceptable in ourselves and instantly become good, become that ideal. What we have seen in it in recent years are the same unacceptable qualities that we are fighting within ourselves. Do you recognize in these eyes a second grade human, a Nazi or the slavery and beastly cruelty of a Russian pigdog? Do not be surprised, we are not capable of hating the enemy more than we hated ourselves. When this toy will be taken away from us, we will again be left alone in a cage with a crocodile, which has recently become accustomed to eating regularly and a lot. I hope you can see it already. So, I sincerely wish us to get out of it alive! But the only way out is accepting yourself real. In the future, this will become the basis of close relationships we are looking for. Because, first of all, they are built with themselves, and then with others.
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.