Identity

«Identity» is a result of study of the opposite sides of national and culture identity: Swedich and Ukrainian. During the process of this performance, Swedish artist Benedikte Esperi was dressed in white and she was travelling at her own trajectory by exhibition space. Maria Kulikovska, for her part, was stranded in the reservoir with the blood and guts. She was destructing the big basin by her feet thereby centering her own trajectory of movement. The Ukrainian artist put on the exhibit floor the fragments of plaster molds around herself which was a peculiar counterform of her researched body. These plaster molds became the forms for creation of artist's soap sculptures-replicas of the triptych «Homo Bulla».

The base for this performance became two sensitive issues of the Swedish national politic and individual freedom of human within it. Taking an abstracted position on the political front, Sweden continues regularly supplying weapons to the conflict zones all over the world. Moreover, Sweden selectively accepted refugees, segregating them into groups. Research of the borders of individual freedom in Sweden and the position of immigrants in it became for Maria Kulikovska, who lived there temporarily, one of the most important issues on the way to «Identity».

During the studying at Konstfack and writing MA, Kulikovska has been thinking a lot about identity, her position, origin and language: «My first language! So beautiful, different and rich, without bizarre dialects! You can resonate everywhere - from Kerch to Kyiv, from siberia to the immigrant family in Sweden, from text message to Holy Bible, from sarcastic scandal to science analysis. I'm your ideal witness. You were conceived in a cave of my stomach. Your voice is universal, but you sound from my mouth similar to the sounds from the mouths of people who called me «other», occupied my homeland and took my home. Do you compare us? I don't think so, cuz I was born in the province and I became its vassal. And you're a shell of it.

My second language, so native too, but I haven't heard you since I was a child. You were long banned, my second language! Where have you been? I'm missing you. I'm so sorry that I'm not using you. My third language - my password in the world of apathy, alienation and globalism! I don't know if I'm completely available with you. My fourth language. I wonder whether you are my long-awaited dream? I'm creating you by myself. Sometimes they don't understand you, but you are unique, my own, and you only can be completely free. Gathering round me my kind, you give me and them freedom. You make us find each other by the language of my art!».