A work about longing for parents at the distance. About the possibility to feel their closeness through working with clay, through real feelings and metaphors. Based on Helen Keller's work "The World I Live In", personal experience and emotions.

My journey into the dialectic of tangible / intangible began with Glenn Adamson and his essay “The paradise of touch” [1]. Developing the theme of bodily experience and its place in the hierarchy of perception, he expresses great admiration for Helen Keller — a blind, deaf and outstanding woman of the 20th century.  

Through the touch, with support of intellect and imagination, she built the reality, in which nothing was missing. Her books and public lectures are full of optimistic and life-loving ideas. Helen created visual images from combinations of sensations and abstractions: “I recognize truth by its clarity and by the way it guides my thought — and knowing what clarity is, I can imagine what light is to the eye.” [2]  She could see landscapes, transferring tactile sensations to visual: “I felt the roundness of the baby’s delicate form. I can apply that feeling to the landscape and to the distant hills.” She imagined the infinity of the sky, deriving it from the infinity of her own mind.  Thus, we can suggest, that invisible does not mean unknowable, and the perception is much more complex process, than just seeing, hearing, smelling, touching.  

This idea is continued in Martina Magretts’ essay “The matter in hand”. She offers examples of modern art where “phenomenological rather than an optical apprehension” is highlighted. These are the works of De Waal “In the night”, Loris Greaud “Unplayed notes factory”, Neil Brownsword “Marl Hole” [3].  In these works, the close interaction of place, objects, materials, the human body is the main vehiculum of artistic idea. 

Being the refugee in a foreign country, I feel there is something important I can’t touch, but what could restore my sense of identity and build a bridge between my pre-war and present life. I miss my family’s touch and presence, and I wish to evoke these perceptions through working with a clay. Helen Keller’s texts, at first impression, look quite poetic, but her reality is trustworthy, because it is not speculative at all. This seeming poetry is formed out of an urgent need and serves as her only guide in space. This way, in my work I want to avoid the modernist temptation of artistic speculation or symbolization, to highlight that narrow corridor in which my memory directly interacts with sensations and material.  

What exactly the touch of my family members feels like and what it can be compared to? It could be the soft hardness, the warm cold, the confident uncertainty.  Embracing some of my family members, I suddenly loose the sense of matter and get an extension of mine, delving into the ephemerality.  

These feelings can be partially recalled by making clay work and squeezing it, smoothly 
falling into its depth. I have built large vases, proportionally resembling human bodies. Long meditative process of simultaneously building three vases has given me the opportunity to think about family, our relationship, identity, separation. Who are we to each other, close or far, memory or reality? Did I lose them or not, and is it really important to know? 

By keeping the vases moist throughout the work, I achieved their maximum softness at the time of filming the video performance. Before embracing them, I covered each one with a white engobe. This gesture was a stylistic reference to the traditional Ukrainian ceramics of the Kosiv region, where the sgraffito technique flourished. The white layer in my work became an expression of the solemn birth of a person. These are white veils and a clean canvas on which life draws its patterns. 

I approach each vase and embrace it. The vases instantly react to my touch and gently bend. I am drowning in them physically, feeling at the same time the fear of the unknown, the emptiness I am encroaching on, and a tender confidence. My touches reveal the red essence of the vases from under the white layer. These are the traces left behind by contact, which touches the essence bypassing the appearance. My touches leave marks on both of us, marks that remain forever. 

Camera: Kristína Opálková 

Video editing support: Gabriela Palijová 
Music: Olivier Messiaen “Catalogue d’Oiseaux” Artist: Ciro Longobardi (piano) 

Much gratitude to UMPRUM and the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for supporting my education.