Date & Location
2016
Odesa, Ukraine
2016
Odesa, Ukraine
Series of cast objects from fibreglass, resins and wax. Created for a personal exhibition in Odesa.
«Folds of Time / Folds of Memory» is a representation of the nature of conflict as one of the main theme-researches of Maria Kulikovska. The folds of material are the visualization of human's movement constraints in a confrontation. The folds of time become a method of slow, but progressive liberation from it. The materials enter into opposition: a fibreglass is light, but tight as opposed to paraffin, which is so easy to fall. A fragile shell hampers the powerful frame of the hidden body. The body-casts of the artist and the hand of her mother.
«Folds of Time / Folds of Memory» is one of the best examples of the close mix of the architectural background of Maria Kulikovska with her artistic practice. The relationship between the body, space and architecture is a permanent element of creativity of the Crimean artist. In 2016, reflecting on the sense of shell, the text «Folds of [my] Armor» was written between borders Malmö – Stockholm – Kyiv – London – Odesa:
««Me» as «I»: I relate all the time to the «Other» as someone else; and in these relations I focus my self-understanding through the 'skin' – both physical and metaphorical – of my surroundings by means of embodiment. We are wholly affected by sharing this membrane which is the landscape of architecture: the body of the space, the public space, where we live, where we build a life and society, where we can ask «Who are you?» or «Who am I?».
Power in the modern era strives to concentrate around the living human body. It is manifested not only in political discourse and calls by the representatives of capital and power institutions; it is embedded in the body of our life among everyday environments and structures, and it dictates the rules at every turn. The most important tool in directing control is architecture, its structure and inherent tendency to subordinate, to manipulate, to introduce and build just and only what is «necessary» for the system.
However, we have a release method. It is in art, performative and very physical: In an animal, sculptural art, radical and inborn. Yet it is all – too soon assimilated to the institutional system of architecture, and then works within it. In a combination of representation with criticism, and of architecture with contemporary art I see a possibility to analyze and even to build a new, more humanistic body for the structures and systems of our society. Because architecture is not just the city streets, houses, areas, apartments, parks and landscapes, schools, hotels, hospitals, prisons, town halls, museums, galleries, etc. It is primarily a skin of our personal and social life and relationships. It is this transit [exchange] between soul and body, between the internal, which we may call true or essential, and the external, which is contingent and public. How to find a freedom that doesn't lose this 'skin'? What if art could thus be a performative method that would remain free and would protect our systems of public space and architecture from power? [from dictatorial and monopolist power].
My study of the body of art and architecture through corporeality and the skin or membrane of public space [landscape], and treat artistic expression as something animal in the 'soul', and which, without religious or esoteric bounds, is able to liberate us and to answer boundless questions: «Who are we?» or «Where are we?»».
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