The sculpture is made of about five hundred elements, consisting of glass and modified foam, laid out on the floor. A special lighting rig is used to highlight the piece.
This sketch is rough and based on the exhibition with this material already shown at the beginning of the war. The exhibition was dedicated to the anti-war resistance in Russia.
I had been working on this project in March/May 2022, in the early days of the war while I was waiting for a response to my many requests for volunteer work. During this time I was also participating in street protests, in the Feminist Anti-War Resistance activitys, searching for understanding what else could I do and how else I could tell no to war. Surprisingly, I never got caught by the police for my anti-war actions, so I decided to make an exhibition dedicated to resistance.
In the first days of the war the clay I worked with became no longer available. I was using clay from the factory in Donbass, Ukraine, which during the war exaltation stopped working, and, eventually, it was almost completely destroyed by the Russian army.
I found acoustic foam rubber, took the remaining clay, some glass – there was so much glass in the military chronicles - in burnt cars, in broken windows. I combined all the materials into a large number of small monuments for the audience to walk through, like through a map on the floor, or like through a cemetery of the future. But I still believe that we should have the power to speak, we should find a way to support each other. Even this small, it’s still resistance.
я ем тишину ложками //
В первые дни войны я нашла кусок черного акустического поролона. Его форма и функция заворожили меня. Это поролон для тишины? Но он пропускает звук. Он убирает эхо, шум, помехи? Но он не делает само звучание тише. Он контейнирует звук, который нельзя удержать.
Сейчас протестное движение - это тоже звук тишины. Это воздух, который уплотняется после произнесенного «я против войны». Это тишина отстранения знакомых, с которыми не можешь найти общий язык из-за стены равнодушия, вложенного оправдания, выбранного забытья. Это звенящая пустота после вопроса «как ты можешь поддерживать то, что русские солдаты убивают людей в Украине?». Это тишина не случившихся звонков знакомым по ту сторону.
Памятниками мелькают точки на карте нашего прошлого. Осколки выбитых взрывами окон отбрасывают солнечные зайчики на потолке детского сада.
Я размочила остатки своей глины и пропитала ей пирамидки, из которых состоит акустический поролон. Одни обожгла, другие оставила так. Попробуй теперь разбери, где какая, когда они все из одного куска. И как различить кто чувствует то же, что и я? Кто в ужасе, кто равнодушен, кто в восторге?
// I’m eating silence by the spoon
In the early days of the Russian war on Ukraine, I found a piece of acoustic foam sheet. Its form and function have fascinated me. Was it made for silence? But the sound goes through it. Does it remove the echo, the noise, the interference? But it does not make the sound itself quieter. It kinda contains the sound that cannot be contained.
The protest movement now is also the sound of silence. It's the way the air thickens after someone says "I am against the war". It's the silence of acquaintances disappearing, those you cannot find a common language with any more. It's a void, ringing after the question “how can you support the fact that Russian soldiers are killing people in Ukraine?”. It's the silence of calls not made, calls to friends on the other side of political stance.
Monuments of our past flare up to burn into a point on the map. Into shards of glass, shattered by explosions, casting sunbeams onto the ceiling.
I expanded the rest of my clay and recomposed it with the foam pyramids. Some burned, others left as they are. How can anyone figure out which is which, when they are all from one piece. Who is horrified, who is indifferent, who is delighted?
P.S.
Despite the shock of the invasion, the Russian military aggression was not a complete surprise. I have been following the situation since 2014, from the moment of the annexation of Crimea, the very fact of the annexation influenced my exit from ceramics sculpture to the political art plane. But, even based on historical background, it was hard to believe that this carnage could begin now and in this form. It was even less likely that families and friendships would fall apart due to different reactions to events. Questions of the manifestation of evil in a loved one, ways of adapting to the world becoming implausible - this is the topic of my current research.
But if we cannot stop them, then we can look at it and resist being together in our beliefs.
