Giants
2022-2023
Sculptures. Plaster, old bedding, branches from Vitsula river.
~320 cm high each figure
A series of sculptures representing freely made "giants" resembling human figures. The giants appear as personification of memories of people, events and places. Rising in the figures, although real, accessible to touch and interaction, they nevertheless remain a metaphor for the presence of a historical man, present at a specific time, whose image has already been blurred and erased. The works are made in the technique using old bed linen impregnated with gypsum: sheets, pillowcases, etc. — “dream” elements acting as a symbol of oblivion, the liminality of all. Dry branches, collected on the Vistula River (and later: on the Polish-Belarusian border), were used as a structural layer.
This long-term project started as a broad anthropological gesture, symbolizing the presence of man in the world as such. The sculptures, on the other hand, have become a kind of blank canvas, ready to accept the diversity of traditions and histories. Every culture can be inside these works — I am creating a sarcophagus, empty and ready to be filled with any stuffing. Each of us has a personal baggage of cultural codes, historical experiences and economic conditions. The contents of this "suitcase" remain a mystery. But the fact that this baggage exists has great significance to this series. The sculptures became an embodiment of the presence of my own Belarusian culture.
This long-term project started as a broad anthropological gesture, symbolizing the presence of man in the world as such. The sculptures, on the other hand, have become a kind of blank canvas, ready to accept the diversity of traditions and histories. Every culture can be inside these works — I am creating a sarcophagus, empty and ready to be filled with any stuffing. Each of us has a personal baggage of cultural codes, historical experiences and economic conditions. The contents of this "suitcase" remain a mystery. But the fact that this baggage exists has great significance to this series. The sculptures became an embodiment of the presence of my own Belarusian culture.
