Extrusion

«Extrusion» is a performative sculpture, created from animal fats and installed between the walls of the gallery space and technical room of YermilovCenter in Kharkiv in March 2014.

The idea of this sculpture came into being during the Revolution of Dignity, which took place in Ukraine from 30th of November to February 2014. The opening of the exhibition at YermilovCenter happened on March 1, 2014, four days after the beginning of the occupation of Kerch – the native town of Maria Kulikovska. The 2014 year was a period of artistic collaboration Crimean artist with Swedish-Assyrian artist Jacqueline Shabo, during which the artists had performance-as-marriage within the framework of the project «Body and Borders». The research of the body and its boundaries, the woman's position in the country with war, the position of woman-emigrant in Sweden, the woman's position in the society and woman's «marginalization» became the main issues of Maria Kulikovska's projects, especially at that time.

After the artist's arrived from Sweden, Maria Kulikovska was notified about the adoption of her art project «Extrusion». It was a hard time for the artist: she was stopped at the border, she was notified about the beginning of the occupation of the Crimea Peninsula by Russia. It was the time when Kyiv's Euromaidan was covered with smoke and ash after the end of the revolution. Despite the internal conflict and artist's state, immediately after the return to Kyiv, Maria Kulikovska went to Kharkiv. The base of the «Extrusion» became the artist's personal and socio-political conflicts. Animal fats filled the gallery space, like a dynamic ever-widening rhizome of government structures, which are set above the social processes.

The choice of sculpture material was in sensitive cooperation with the choice of form of interaction with space. «Extrusion» became the cooperating point between the gallery hall with a technical room. All external horrors and conflicts, like the elements of this installation, are hidden in the valley of human's consciousness, but constantly reminding themselves. Moreover, they often remain missed and bad throught-out.