Zen

This artwork is probably not the last in this project; We still have a lot to tell. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the number of triggers is only increasing, Nadiya and I did not intend to describe them all. If we ignore our trauma, it grows in the nervous system like a mushroom mycelium, absorbing more and more normal life and common sense. Over the years, a personality can turn into an exposed wound, a minefield, and everything around us can become a trigger, and the snow globe grows to the scale of the universe. This artwork is final.

We called it "Zen," a state of clear mind in which we perceive the world as it is, in which we can see its deep essence, see "with the heart." But this is not its only name. It is also "Freedom," the real kind, because what kind of freedom can we talk about when we are limited by trauma, an invisible disability? This is also "Happiness," a calm but permanent and unchanging state, because it is only possible here. This is also unconditional "Love", for the self, first of all, because that is what is catastrophically lacking in trauma.

Psychologists say that it is impossible to heal in the environment where you were traumatized. Or that it is not possible to completely get rid of trauma, you can only learn to live with it. In my opinion, these are false manifestations of a limiting paradigm inherited from traditional medicine. It teaches us to perceive ourselves as mechanisms, as biorobots that have lost their functionality, as if psychological trauma is like a disability that prevents us from moving normally through life. But its true essence is perhaps spiritual and significantly deeper.

Perhaps this is not a mental illness or a wound that cannot be healed, but rather a trial—a rope around the neck of a small, tied-up baby elephant. Perhaps trauma is a necessary obstacle that we have to overcome on our individual and collective life path to our true selves, on our way home, our way to paradise. Perhaps it is only possible to heal in the environment where we were traumatized, restoring belief in ourselves, living again through pain, grief, shame, and fear—the same painful circumstances—but as an adult, mature person. With love for the self and for life. Because, as our history shows, what we cannot overcome now, our children or grandchildren will continue to try. In tens or hundreds of years, they will return as our passionate descendants from Europe or America to Ukraine to fight for freedom again, and most likely, they will stand to the end and die, because those who lived here and should have stood by will run with their ropes to Europe or America.

So, the last, fifth, title of this artwork is "Exposure". See you on the other side of the glass.

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.