Carpet #2

This work is a textile continuation of the watercolor series "The Saga of Pregnant Me and My Pregnant Husband,"created based on medical reports and ultrasound scans of Maria Kulikovska's pregnancy. The translation of watercolor technique into carpet art introduces a new level of materiality and tactility, transforming the ephemeral lines of painting into a relief texture that can be not only seen but also felt to the touch.

The central image of the work remains the artist's body, transformed and altered by pregnancy, embodying both physical and psychological metamorphosis. Here, pregnancy is understood as a state between life and death, control and chaos, bodily fragility and extraordinary strength. This is why Kulikovska's body in this piece takes on hypertrophied, almost surreal features—a fusion of the human with the botanical, the intimate with the universal.

The presence of flowers in the composition references the medieval iconographic tradition of hortus conclusus (Latin for "enclosed garden"), which symbolizes the female body, fertility, and a protected space of life. However, in Kulikovska's interpretation, this motif is not static: the flowers grow through the body, merge with it, break its boundaries, creating a complex interaction between the internal and the external, the personal and the societal.

The textile medium enhances the bodily dimension of the work—the embroidered surface resembles skin that preserves stories and experiences while simultaneously contrasting with the printed text of medical documents emerging through the fibers. This interplay erases the boundaries between the official and the personal, the corporeal and the bureaucratic, the real and the symbolic.

The carpet becomes part of the artist’s long-term practice of documenting the body as a political object that does not solely belong to itself. Just like the watercolors painted on medical forms, this work addresses the issue of control over the body, its social and legal fixation. Here, pregnancy is not only a personal experience but also a space of societal expectations, norms, and taboos that shape perceptions of the female body and its transformations.

"The Saga of Pregnant Me and My Pregnant Husband" in textile form acquires a new level of material permanence. While watercolor is fleeting, fluid, and light, the carpet is a physical, durable object that absorbs warmth and touch. It is not just an image of a pregnant body but its transformation into an object that becomes part of the space—one that can be felt yet also carries the weight of documentary fixation.

Like the entire series, this work leaves open-ended questions: where is the boundary between the body and the authority over it? Who determines its status and right to exist? How does a physical state become a social category? The artist seeks answers to these questions not only through painting but also through the tactile space of the carpet, which remains a witness to this transformation.

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Sviatoslav Mykhailov