Home security
Iryna Vorona
Artist statement:
For Ukrainians, home is an almost sacred word. Feeling an elusive connection with the land, Ukrainians are attached to it forever. We cannot leave our home, and if we are forced to do so, wherever we find ourselves, we will always find a way to return. The land is our kind and our identity. Due to our home, we know who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Taking away our home is the same as destroying us. However, Ukrainians will rebuild it from the ashes, in the same place where they grew up, where our ancestors are buried. The work "Home safety" touches on the theme of human life, because through the archetypes of "home" and "war" it reveals the theme of life, the juxtaposition of hopeless situations, characterized by apathy, and a sharp change in life, which instantly changes our perception of everythings. Today the home is in danger, we hide in our native walls, but our "safe space" can be destroyed at any moment. Safety has become a myth, concrete walls are like paper, and the ceiling is like a cobweb.
The roots of generational memory are both unconscious and contemporary. It is a set of archetypes polished by myths, beliefs, traditions and rites. Working with threads has a ritualistic effect at its core; through the movements and semantics of the weaving process, a totem is created, i.e. protection, that is a safe space of a home. Ritual totem movements arose ten thousand years BCE and were associated with magic, primitive beliefs and fetishism. There are no voluntary movements in rituals; each gesture has a symbolic and magical meaning. Protective movements were endowed with the magical power of protecting its own territory.
The world does not understand why we do not leave Ukraine. For an outsider, a home is conditional, because you can live anywhere, but for Ukrainians it is not like that. Myth for others, reality for us. Houses are disappearing every day, turning into ashes, our home is like a cobweb that someone quickly cleaned up. Yesterday it was there, but today the house is gone. But we still can't leave it.
Each person has his own faith, this does not mean religious faith, but everyday beliefs on simple things that surround us, so the perception of the artwork depends on this true belief inside us. "The well-known and incomprehensible saying attributed to the church teacher Tertullian - "credo quia absurdum est" (I believe because it is absurd) – characterizes the psychological nature of faith," outlines M.Berdyaev. So, if our homes aren't safer than a cobweb, I'm visualizing it. Through the installation of threads, I materialize the myth of safety, in which we have been living for more than 8 months. A shelter made of web of threads is an allegory of today's myth about safety, because there is no safe place in Ukraine today. Our home, our safe space, is no longer the same. It doesn't matter if you have a strong house made of concrete or wood or no house at all, you are in the same danger. Despite everything, Ukrainians cannot leave their homes. They will stand knee-deep in the ground, cold, hungry, but strong and free at their home.
We are being forced to leave our homes but we are not leaving.
We are being kicked out of our land but we return.
Our homes are destroyed but we rebuild them.
We are told to flee our own home because it is dangerous, but we are staying, we debunk this myth. Home safety is a myth, but here I am, creating a counter-myth about the safiy of my home.
Media: installation.
Materials: threads of different thickness and transparency, tree; spotlights; glass; metal; LED strip; agro fabric; creepy details.
"I have been working with thread as an artistic material since 2017, having first used it as an auxiliary tool in the installation "Silence of light" in Norway. My last work in this technique was the installation "White souls", which was presented as part of the international festival AirGogolFest in Vinnytsia in 2019. That time I planned, it would be my last artwork in this series, which explores the relationship between individual and society. However, today I feel the need to return to this topic and, after rethinking it, reveal its main component, namely the role of the individual and Ukrainian identity in the conditions of the war which affected all of us".
Iryna Vorona
