Ukrainian artist Maria Plotnikova
I am fascinated by people. Specifically, their complex and often messy relations with each other mixing in the same body sense of belonging and sense of personal boundaries, alienation and acceptance of the Other, a need to love and a need to destroy each other. My art is the process of exploring and expressing these eclectic ties and their development in time and space. I use various mediums— performance, painting, drawing, video, and installation seeing them as different languages. They can not be directly translated, as a lot of sense will be missing.
In my group performances, I reflect on collectivist and individualist paradigms and the relation between group and individual. The instruction is usually simple and does not assume a trained body. The performance narrative relies a lot on the particular group of
people performing, free to interpret the instruction in a way that better reflects their personalities, background, and present group dynamics. Therefore, each iteration of each performance is different. The simplicity and asceticism of the action place the focus on performers and their experience, making them co-authors of the piece they take part in.
In my paintings and drawings created since February 2022, I try to define the experience of war that other Ukrainians and I live through, personally and collectively. Balancing between being changed by this and staying myself, I do it while breaking down this indescribable, all-encompassing pain into smaller parts the cuts, as I call this method and this series.
The core realization for me is that being in a state of war is one of the ancient, ugly forms of relationship between humans. War is not an exception, as in history, there was not a year humanity didn't do war. Yet, this realization is immensely unwanted and heavy, especially when the war continues. Pressured by this, my mind and body badly crave a sense of safety.
This is when I clutch to the rescuing physical border between my body and a canvas. The one that performance does not give.
Photo
@shebetko 
