Giants
2022-2023
Sculptures. Plaster, old bedding, branches from Vitsula river.
~320 cm high each figure
A series of 7 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, were used as a structural layer.
The Giants project began for me a year ago as a series of large-scale sculptures in which I wanted to transfer my painting into three-dimensional space, to create a "body" for it. This long-term project started as a broad anthropological gesture, symbolizing the presence of man in the world as such, but over time it acquired a much deeper meaning and became an impulse to understand my own identity and my role in art. While working on the project, I abandoned the idea of myself as a universal person and an abstract citizen of the world, tracing my path of alienation from my native Belarusian background to the fact that I am its contemporary representative. The sculptures, on the other hand, have become a kind of blank canvas, ready to accept the diversity of traditions and histories. Every culture and nationality can be inside these works — I am creating a sarcophagus, empty and ready to be filled with any stuffing. The reason for continuing the series was to realize the uniqueness of my own background. 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 me. The sculptures became an embodiment of the presence of my culture.
The Giants project began for me a year ago as a series of large-scale sculptures in which I wanted to transfer my painting into three-dimensional space, to create a "body" for it. This long-term project started as a broad anthropological gesture, symbolizing the presence of man in the world as such, but over time it acquired a much deeper meaning and became an impulse to understand my own identity and my role in art. While working on the project, I abandoned the idea of myself as a universal person and an abstract citizen of the world, tracing my path of alienation from my native Belarusian background to the fact that I am its contemporary representative. The sculptures, on the other hand, have become a kind of blank canvas, ready to accept the diversity of traditions and histories. Every culture and nationality can be inside these works — I am creating a sarcophagus, empty and ready to be filled with any stuffing. The reason for continuing the series was to realize the uniqueness of my own background. 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 me. The sculptures became an embodiment of the presence of my culture.
