Vsi.Svoi. Body as Mannequin

Collaboration of Maria Kulikovska and Oleh Vinnichenko with Vsi.Svoi store became the first integration of MKOV Studio's works with the fashion industry. Body as mannequin is a long-term project of Maria Kulikovska within of which the full-sized sculptures from ballistic soap or epoxy resin, soap busts and others sculptural body's parts of the artist have taken the mannequin's function, at the same time not losing their complicated engineered metaphors, their performatives and autobiographical – their «conflict?» background, their genetics.

The performative sculptures, created by MKOV Studio, are transformed, mutated, decorated, and destroyed by natural and human factors, by the ravages of time. The investigation of the interaction of various materials (soap, wax, chocolate) with the environment is important to Maria Kulikovska's practice. The sculptures are made of temporary materials, therefore they become a fixation of the changes that occur in the physical human body after death.

Invisible body,
Invisible injury,
Invisible work of women,
Invisible world of colors,
Unknown planet of flowers,
Unknown peace...
Oh, freedom and acceptance!
Oh, fantastic world of equality, where injury does not exist and every scar on my skin has healed and polished!
I want to change my skin at any moment, at any time, constantly, continuously and endlessly, its color, its structure, choose how it should be and look like.
The scars on my free body will no longer be a sign of violence and pain from the past, and it will no longer be a sign of a second-class body or «other»,
it will be a privilege, it will be a beauty, it will be
a memory, it will be a history, it will be a struggle,
it will be a freedom.
Oh, where are you, freedom and love?
I am, I am alive, I will always be!
‍
– Maria Kulikovska

‍