Belonging - this is a series of installations, inspired with the symbols of Ukrainian culture, which shaped itself in the process of exploring the question of identity.
Objects of traditional culture, that were relocated and torn from native environment, seem to appear in unexpected places like aliens. They build out a new harmony of connections with the surrounding, unfamiliar world, while remaining foreigners in the background of strange landscapes of a foreign country.
Objects-symbols follow the path of transformation in the works of the artist, which metaphorically echoes with the personal experience of author’s relocation, so as of many Ukrainians, who were forced to move abroad because of russian war against Ukraine, or who stayed home and felt a strong impulse to rethink their sense of belonging.
As if travelling in time, from a static picture of the past, objects-symbols quickly find themselves in the dynamic present and begin their “odyssey” home, showing us the way to the hidden roots of self-identification that weaves spaces and dimensions with strong invisible lines, combining traditions, culture and ancestry memory with the person here and now.
What do these silent narrators hide in themselves, and what do they help us discover?
Each installation and interaction with it is a way to look into the half-open door of one’s sense of belonging.
THE STAR. Installation
The Christmas Star is a symbol of the Star of Bethlehem that shone in the sky over two thousand years ago and announced to the world about the birth of God, the Heart of the World, in the body of a baby.
In conditions of complete inconsistency, God is born to this earth not in the palace, but in a barn next to cattle.
Hope is born in inconsistency.
“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not covered it.” from John 1:5
Today, the light on earth lights up in other conditions of inconsistency: among the trenches, shelters, refugee camps.
Amidst the darkness, mundanely and inconsistency, in the garage of the Art Center, the light of the Ukrainian Christmas Star shines, which, holding the essence of the events of the present, announces the birth of home, humanity, tenderness and strength regardless of place, time and space, in conditions of a disaster.
Similar to the virtues that manifest in people and sacralize the cruel circumstances of war, the Star in a certain way sacralized the square meters around it by intertwining with the sound of an old carol song, and giving every viewer the opportunity to interact with it.
THE GARDEN. Installation
The Garden is a fragmented and reassembled image of the Tree of Life, which, according to the beliefs of ancient Ukrainians, was the basis of the universe and combined three worlds: the afterlife, the earthly and the heavenly. The installation space is an attempt to convey the transformation of the World Tree into the image of a multi-structured garden formed from individual sprouts, particles of the original tree.
This is an attempt to reflect on the fragmentary, subjective perception of traditional cultural symbols by modern people and, at the same time, an attempt to find the contents among these fragments. Can old resentments sprout fresh roots in us? Can a new fresh branch grow from the archaic Tree of Life, which connected the worlds according to our ancestors, connecting the past with the future through the present?
This is a model of the World Tree, fragmented under the prism of modern man's perception, something integral and harmonious, but at the same time chaotic, fragmentary, vulnerable.
What remains behind the focus of our attention in everyday life, which opens up in unexpectedly changed conditions? How to assemble a whole from parts and, on the contrary, see small things in the big picture?
Made in the traditional Ukrainian technique of paper cutting, each element-vytynanka* becomes a part of the symbolic modern Tree (Garden) of Life*.
SPIDER LULLABY. Instsllation
It is a meditative space built around a group of geometric structures made of straw. Because of their lightness, even from the slight movement of air and people in space, the objects begin to rotate slowly, synchronizing with the rhythm of a folk lullaby.
In the Ukrainian tradition, such moving mobiles are called
spiders” - and this is an ancient attribute of Christmas holidays, which harmonizes the space, and is a symbol of the world structure, a kind of fractal model of the universe.
spiders” - and this is an ancient attribute of Christmas holidays, which harmonizes the space, and is a symbol of the world structure, a kind of fractal model of the universe.
The installation is mine attempt to materialize the state before sleep, the spaced between the worlds, where reality and dreams find their intersecting lines and are drawn in the whimsical shadows that fall from the “spiders” around, as if weaving the beginning and end of ages into a web, BELONGING born from a mother’s lullaby (and maybe even earlier), but it manifests itself in you now.
Spiders are straw geometric designs, one of the earliest prototypes of kinetic mobile sculptures and the most mysterious straw creation.
