Make Pieces from Pieces, 2022, charred wood, dehydrated fruit, ditigal prit, terracotta, soil, canvas, buckwheat, embroidered linen, dried flora.
Making pieces from pieces is a call to action rooted in urgent matter.
How do we make a future from fragments of the present?
How might objects give us a glimpse into survival, resilience, and rebuilding?
What might that mean for the Ukrainian future?
Perched on a window ledge, objects sit and ponder about their strength and becoming — burned wood that will not burn again, vegetable matter preserved and dehydrated. A handful of seeds. A fragile embroidered cloth. A smudge of charcoal.
Above them looms the Reaper.
Жнець (Reaper) is an obsolete taker. It knows that to burn is to eat and to grow is to burn. It is unnerving, like the precarious nature of our wealth and belonging. It asks - what will you give to stay where you are? What will you give to let me serve your tables and stories, knowing that your end haunts you? The black smoke haunts you. It creeping onto you haunts you.
And while the haunting creeps, the heroic fragments give us power. Pieces and pieces, although some scattered, some old, and some too new, give space to hope, to the diasporic, and to a possibility of togetherness in a time of separation.
Making pieces from pieces is resistance found in Ukrainian hands.