Date & Location
Summer 2017
PARK3020: First contemporary sculpture park in Ukraine, Lviv region
Summer 2017
PARK3020: First contemporary sculpture park in Ukraine, Lviv region
Series of 7 full-sized sculptural figures cast from epoxy resin, which are in a private collection.
The series consists of the seven sculptural figures of Kulikovska's body cast in epoxy resin. These full-sized sculptures were specially created for private art collectors couple and later became a part of the first public park of contemporary sculpture – PARK3020.
During the creation of the series «Memento Mori», Maria Kulikovska searched for materials similar to soap, but more resistant to transformation. Thus she created perpetual epoxy sculptures for the «perpetual Garden of Eden». The architectural education of Maria always encourages her to analyze the space before mounting sculptures. In the park, the artist placed her figures-copies like some kind of star cluster. Each of the stars, pointing in its direction, builds a whole architecture of motion, like stardust.
Considering the personal background of the artist, who grew up on the Kerch peninsula in Crimea surrounded by ancient temples and various Hellenistic architectural structures, creating women's full-sized sculptures, Kulikovska appeals to caryatids - the structural-decorative elements of ancient Greek architecture. They hold the weight of structures, as women in conditions of patriarchal influence, military conflict or other social and personal traumas, but after living the pain, have got in the long-awaited Eden - the paradise garden.
Shortly before the project was created, Maria had the opportunity to see the artworks of the Polish artist Alina Szapocznikow at the Królikarnia Palace in Warsaw, which became a field of artistic experiments with polyester resins for the Polish artist. As a result of experiments with the materials, semi-transparent sculptures of the human body were created. The connection between the art of Szapocznikow and Kulikovska is clear. The Polish sculptor also worked with the body and fixed the human skin in various short-lived materials that reflected the pain and fragile essence of nature and the human body. In addition to the experiments with epoxy resin, the personal histories of both artists are very similar. During the war years, Alina Szapocznikow had to move to another place, like Maria Kulikovska, who ended up in Kyiv and who still has no possibility of returning to Kerch city.
The series of sculptures «Memento Mori» has emerged from the first collaboration of Maria Kulikovska with her future husband, the technologist of this project, the architect-engineer - Oleh Vinnichenko. The act of visualizing the pain and the traumas has been remade, transformed, mutated - reborn into an act of love.
Memento mori overlaps with the vanitas tradition, both of which have become popular motives of baroque art. The motif vanitas and memento mori are still being researched and reinterpreted by artists, as well as becoming a full-fledged idea base of artworks, as for example this sculpture series «Memento Mori».
