Burned Epoxy Bust

Epoxy resin is a synthetic thermoelectric substance, which emits a large amount of toxic heat during heating. It requires a specific approach to working with this material that the sculpture can start taking on mass without exploding. For the creation of this sculpture, Maria Kulikovska and Oleh Vinnichenko called on the technologists to get the sort of resin most resistant to damage and explosions. However, during the heating, the new resin exploded in the central and lower part of the form. The upper part of the exploded sculpture survived. That's how this sculpture bust came into being.

The history of the creation of this artwork engages in a dialogue with the cross-cutting issues of the artistic practice of Maria Kulikovska - issues of conflict, which are visualized in art and become a way of personal and collective therapy. In Kulikovska's creativity, she often refers to dramatic events of 2014 that have covered the east and south of Ukraine, and directly relate to Maria Kulikovska's artworks. In the 2014 sculptural series «Army of Clones» and «Homo Bulla - The Human as Soap Bubble», which were exhibited at Izolyatsia Art Centre, became targets for the shooting the DPR* militants, who seized the cultural institute and turned it into a prison. After these events Maria started a series of performances, in which she destroyed her own sculptures personally, appealing to the events of 2014 and criticizing them. The unexpected explosion caused by the heat of the resin in the sculpture form became an allegorical visualization of the complicated process of the artist's psychological emancipation.

* DPR — self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic