The exhibition “Dancing around Suffering. Finding Light in Darkness” curated by Paula Marschalek deals with often negatively connoted aspects of suffering, offers an alternate way to find balance, freedom, and peace in life.
Inspired by mediation, and personal experiences, Kristina Kulakova sees life as a dance around suffering, in which something positive can always occur, enabling us to overcome given problems and reconsider the way of life. She shows the photographic series DANCING AROUND SUFFERING. In the exhibition, three different compositions are shown for the first time. Exceptional flowers, fruit or vegetables, which can be found in every refrigerator, are draped in a still life that alludes to transience and shows the beauty of everyday life. For this series, Kulakova mixed analog photography with digital, using light filters to create distortions to depict the illusory nature of our perception. The titles Passadi, PITTI, Upeka refer to different stages of meditation, being on the path to enlightment as well as reflecting the state of the inner self.
Especially, for the space and the exhibition, she designed a silk print that draws attention to the inner processes of suffering, and allows a glimpse behind the facade, into the private, into the inner mind. Visitors can walk around it, their vibrations and ideas are absorbed by the textile object. It gets into motion.
For an interactive sculptural element, Kulakova invited the designer Evgeniia Kazarezova to introduce her interactive ceramic installation Portrait of the inner self, which offers to create an abstract image of your inner being by combining various ceramic elements with the CHOAS DOME. The diversity of the object symbolises both the nature of a life flow and a human character – a balance of naivety and complexity, symmetry and disorderly. The Chaos dome was created by wheel-throwing the dome shape. 77 holes were made for placing the dissimilar hand-built elements. It is part of a long-term project of social exploration and gathering an archive of human feelings through the act of co-creation of the piece of art. In this exhibition the question „What‘s on your mind?“ and the playful possibility of arranging flowers and ceramics individually according to one‘s own feelings, calls for interactivity and allows for a collective reflection. Creating a portrait implies setting ceramic elements in a certain way combining them with the dome. It is free to choose how many elements to use and how to arrange them.
Credits: Kristina Kulakova
Marschalek Art Management 