2020
'Prometheus' is a body of work I started in 2020, as a result of my research on carbon as an essential element and component of all life forms on our planet. I looked at the life circle of a body and its vast impact on the human condition.
I discovered unique carbon recycling process invented by Pascal Dowers - an expert in carbon fibre creative design. We exchanged the research and concluded in experimenting processes at their West Sussex carbon fibre manufacturing facility.
This resulted in a series of unique pieces in material never previously used in a carbon art context.
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I spent more than two years developing ‘Prometheus’; building on the notion of myths, their stories and the symbology; encrusted in ancient myths and their knowledge transfer through time, then synthesising and re-interpreting them through they eyes of the scientific development and technological progress as we now understand; and their impact on the human being/race and their life circle.
Prometheus myth
Greek’s pantheon of Gods presents Prometheus as one of the creators and founders of humans. Myths mention complexity of the process turning clay made designs into living creatures. Beside being a father of all human beings, Prometheus is also known as the foreseeing one.
After the king of the gods, Zeus, refused fire to all mankind, Prometheus secretly stole fire from the Olympus mountain, and passed it back to poor humankind, suffering distress in darkness. Obviously Zeus discovered this crime, and condemned Prometheus to be bound to a remote mountain for eternal suffering, as a punishment.
Each day a personification of Zeus, as an eagle came to feed on his liver to the painful determent of Prometheus, and each time his liver regrew overnight to be eaten again the next day.
In the western classical tradition Prometheus became a symbol of scientific and technological development, but also possible overreaching consequences often leading to a tragedy.
2020 - 2023
Study for 'Prometheus' in various media developed along the series of recycled carbon tableaux. I worked on between 2020 - 2023.
I worked mainly with fat, charcoal of burned Southdown's wood, organic forms and combined them with print, graphite, ink and charcoal based paint and paper.
I question:
What is it that humankind nowadays needs most from Prometheus? What is the new ’fire’?
What would be the punishment he would pay for this gift and insubordination?
Simultaneously, I reflect on imbedded in myths scientific knowledge for example the confidence in a human liver regenerative properties, clearly familiar to the antique authors.
Finally I try to envisage reflections of emerging contemporary rhetorics upon classical myths. Alike life circle, myths once asleep awaken with the shifts of intellectual powers, rising in the forms of a new education and propaganda.
Levi-Strauss said that myth can only end when the 'intellectual impulse with which it was produced is exhausted'.
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2022 - ongoing
carbon art
I began developing these six large-scale, recycled carbon fibre works titled ‘Sacred Heart’ in the summer of 2022. It is a depiction of six human hearts - varying in structure, form and materiality.
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The Hearts are collages of different carbon fibre materials reclaimed from the land fields,
that have been exposed to different stage of degradation. I engraved the surface of the bonded carbon, applied dust, charcoal, gold, ink and resin.
Heart:
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This most essential body muscle; romanticised to be responsible for love, the responder to ‘fight or flight’’-adrenaline rush, the engine of the body; are concepts driving my fascination for the concerns of the contemporary heart, and the omnipresence of carbon in the life cycle. Ultimately I place the force of mortality against the universe’s timelessness.
I looked at the historical, cultural and religious connotations of this organ. I became once again influenced by the fantastic depiction of a heart in the historical anatomy books - the way medical knowledge was relayed way before photography's invention.
I noted the evolving understanding of the heart’s motility and how it’s relationship to humanity changed over the centuries’; the symbology and significance of the heart across different cultures and religions and how it has been preserved.
Having catholic heritage myself, I experienced customs with the heart as a symbol of devotion to ‘God’s boundless and passionate love for mankind’.
I decided to create the symbology of a heart in carbon, with the complexity of its connotations and materiality, reflecting the heart’s miraculous qualities we are granted.
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2023 - ongoing
‘Rorschach Universe’ is my ongoing body of work started in 2023 with the initial inspiration being based on the personality test developed by Swiss psychologist and psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach.
His test is widely used once by psychologists to examine a person’s personality characteristics and emotional functioning, based on their perceptions and interpretations of the abstract inkblots formulated by Rorschach.
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Here I am interested in pareidolia (our natural ability and urge to distinguish familiar shapes from any abstraction) and the relationships between substantial and spectral, familiar, visible and obscured. I deep into perceptive similarities and symmetry in micro and macro organic patterns, zooming in and out from within the human body into the outer universe and back to finally juxtapose it with the symbology of the cultural heritage.
Each of ‘Rorschach Universe’ pieces is unique, handmade, born in uncontrollable process of folding and imprinting mix substances.
I used a mix of insoluble substance formulas to create experimental matrix on resin-coated paper. I then rubbed, drew into, ’reworked’ and polished surfaces resulting in imprints of spectral, astral and organic yet abstract forms.
2017-2020
body in art
'Ghosteen Dance' serves as my personal anthem to themes of growth, fertility, sexuality, innocence, and mortality. Works developed between 2017 and 2020 comprises two performances, a series of body imprints, drawings and photographs, all entered around the narrative of a virgin who chooses to preserve her innocence until marriage at mature age.
I incorporated three primary elements:
- The mythological character of Pan, the goat- headed god of the wild, growth and companionship.
- Symbolism drawn from expansive blue sky and Van Gogh’s iconic cherry blossom imagery.
- Inspiration from the title ‘Ghosteen’ and the music of poet Nick Cave.
The initial performance of the 'Ghosteen Dance' series, took place and was recorded at the University of Brighton in 2018.
Performance depicts a naked female figure amongst busy street crowd and constantly crushing onto her traffic. Obscured from view, engaged in a struggle against the relentlessness of this flow.
The subsequent performance 'Ghosteen Dance' was a live performance in 2019 at the studio, resulting in a series of photographs titled 'After Dance’. Here, female nude in a goat mask performing nymph's dance on the sky-like backdrop of the cherry blossoms tree.
The performance is accompanied by music from Nick Cave's album 'Ghosteen'.
Naive in form, vibrant figuration of imprinted body emphasises the joy of life, while the vase (pictorial container) became a full and half-full/empty sense of hope and the symbol of primitive foraging, essence of majesty and immortality of renewed life, fertility, eternal love and longing of a woman turned into a mesmerising, compassionate, transcendental goddess.
The installation features direct imprints of the female body onto paper surface, layers with suspended, human-size goat mask. Together body imprints and the mask dynamics symbolise the ancient dance of survival.
2016 - ongoing
PERPETUUM
body in art
This selected works titled 'Perpetuum' is a selection of works from my ongoing series tilted 'Anatomy of Being' which I initiated in 2017 and continue to explore.
Through this series, I’ve created life-size body imprints and delve into questions surrounding identity, belonging, and complicated web of connections that shape self, relationships and common visions.
This particular work employs the raw, performative nature of the registration. The weight, nakedness and vulnerability of a body I stressed onto the surface represents elementary manifestation of being in the perpetual yearning for identity.
2019 - 2020
mortality in art
The 'Senet' installation is a project I began in 2021 and contains a combination of 56 individual tiles and sculptures. Among these, fourteen tiles measure approx. dimension of 13 x 13 cm, while the remaining forty-two tiles are approx 11 x 11 cm. Each tile is numbered and assembled into a layout spanning approx 145 x 66, although the dimensions of this work remain fluid and depends on arrangement and rules of the game.
Dating back to 2620 BCE, the Egyptian game of Senet (meaning ‘passing’) stands as the oldest discovered game and alike purpose to myth, ritual, or riddle.
The detailed rules of the game remain unclear, nevertheless studies suggest its initial ritualistic purposes.
Rooted in Egyptian beliefs surrounding the journey to the afterlife, Senet was believed to be a tool for the redemption of sins, enabling possible reunion with the gods yet on earth.
Played by one person against the god, game allowed lucky and skilled player to potentially influence the final judgment over his own soul. Custom-made senet became important artefact of amulet significance, serving spiritual affirmations, dealing with existential anxieties alike the myth.
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The installation contains 30 small (approx 15 x 5 cm) sculptural pieces - clay pawns.
Seven of these are eye-shaped clay sculptures with a dried passion fruit trapped in the centre, further seven, depict different body parts such as feet, fingers, fists, breasts, noses, ears and upward-directed hands.
Another, six sculptures represent surreal, human-like characters symbolising 'human struggle’ - equivalent to chess figures: a horse, tower, king, queen and bishop.
One tile is suspended between two intertwined hands, symbolising an offering plate and altar, with the impressions of beads, commonly associated with meditation or prayer.
None of the tiles are fixed in place, therefore position is flux and depends on the 'player' and his game. Like puzzles, the tiles can be arranged to reveal an engraved female figure, within whose belly lies symbols of primitive natural forces - the heart, sun, guts, ribs, and womb.
To evoke the concept of time, and the fragility of existence, the surface of each tile is distressed with various impressions of objects, engravings, staining, drawings and breakage.​
2016 - ongoing
The ‘Borders’ project I started in 2016 and continued through 2017 and later.
This long-duration performance was designed to confine the body in a restricted space and subjecting it to a series of polarised atmospheric environments over a span of 12 hours.
In the studio, I installed 3 large boxes (60 x 120 cm) each them interiors painted in a different, primary colour. Pulsating, multicoloured spotlight projected onto the space altered atmosphere every minute. Over the course of 12 hours, I inhabited space of this boxes, shifting between these in the rhythm of coloured light shift.
My initial objective was to explore the various psychological borders within repressed body mass, unfolding over passing time.
2016 - ongoing
Passiflora edulis - commonly referred to as passion fruit, is a vine species of passion flower. The fruit of this plant is a spherical, fleshy berry with a juicy interior filled with numerous seeds, each surrounded by a membranous sac. At maturity, the fruit is either yellow or dark purple with slightly acidic and musky flavour.
The name ‘passion fruit’ appropriated by Christian missionaries after the passion of Jesus and used in the efforts to convert indigenous inhabitants to Christianity.
The ’flower of the five wounds’ served as an educational tool in this endeavour.
I’ve chosen ‘Passion Fruit’ as the title for my collection of works, building on a metaphor for life’s diverse flavours, mortality and our conditioned passion for being.
2017 - ongoing
The 'Self Portrait', my ongoing body of work evolved into a collective self- portrait, rooted in contemplation of human and environmental relationships and connections that bind us.
I began to document people and environments that distinctively imprinted upon myself in specific moments in time. I wanted to capture the subtle nuances, inevitability of repetitiveness and the influence of shared habitats.
Current work contains an edition of hand - printed lithographs on Somerset paper, alongside a collection of masks. Each mask mirrors my own divided in half and inverted reflection. I asked people I know, to wear this mask so I could observe and document reflection of myself within them.