When I lie down, I become the garden. I am a vase

As I work on finding a new visual expression, I am, in fact, returning to myself — a poetic artist who dares to speak of the personal, to explore materials, and to create monumental, performative sculptural objects from fragile matter. Since last winter, I have been in constant crisis, searching through my PhD journey for myself again. In dialogue with my beloved co-creator [Oleh Vinnichenko], in long conversations with my professor [Alissa Clarke], and in looking closely at the paths of sister-artists — Mona Hatoum, Alina Shapochnikow, Renate Bertlmann, Penny Slinger, Eva Hesse... — I learn to trust again intuition, the body, the skin.

In the performance, my body lies on the floor, wrapped in bandages and nylon — a fragile double skin. Around me are flowers I have made by hand, cast from tulips in transparent resin with herbs, casts of bones, and bullet shells filled with red pigment and flowers. There are also pacifiers from my daughter, never used but transformed into transparent capsules of memory and healing. I try to unwrap myself, breathing into a microphone, while on a large screen, my mouth releases bones, shells, pacifiers, and flowers. My voice recalls my grandmother’s “recipes” of healing herbs.

The performance lasts 15 minutes — the length of time measured in reality by an air raid alert, from the first siren to the all clear. The sound of the siren frames the work, opening and closing the act, reminding us that the body is the only home that cannot be evacuated.