Lustration / Ablution №8

Lustration / Ablution was a long-term performance that the artist planned to enact 88 times throughout her lifetime.

During "Lustration," Maria, immersed in a bathtub together with her soap sculptures of hands and feet containing flowers inside, performed a ritual of self-lustration. She washed her body and face, engaging in an act of sacrifice, thus cleansing herself from past traumas. Reflecting on the action, the artist commented: "With my own hands, I washed myself, combed through, tore away the soap skin, wiped myself, cleansed, and shook off my entire body. I observed the lustration of my own image and that of a woman in the patriarchal context. Washing and erasing my own hands was a reference to the invisible labor of women—something society portrayed as beautiful, normal, and natural, woven into the very skin of every woman, yet it also imperceptibly dissolved her."

Soap, the primary material used to create the body cast sculptures of the artist, was a metaphorically conflicted material. It was used in military factories for testing weapons of mass destruction because it had the same density as the human body and was semi-transparent, making it an ideal platform for testing the most lethal weaponry.

Kulikovska’s desire to cleanse herself from pain, political conflicts, discrimination, hardships, and the chaos of this world transformed into art therapy—a lustration of herself through the sculptural replica of her own body.

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