Time Decay, 2024
The artist is developing an ongoing series of works, “Leaving the Shelter,” that started in 2022 at the Stove Works art residency at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. The constellation of scenery, sculptural objects, and time-based activations like video, sound, performances, or smell and fog are meant to evoke dizziness, imbalance, displacement, and the embodiment of loss. The mournful tone of the assemblage explores relationships between the body, time, and space by eluding direct representation and the struggle to find grounding or to center the self.
The artist asks questions about how sensory disturbances spread during the war, far from the site of the violence, reflecting how the materiality of perception develops over time and space, creating a memory reservoir. And when did the assault start or end? From the day of the attack, or much earlier, when aggression is not yet detected or dismissed? How does the assault continue after the attack ends? How do we know fear without being there? How are generations passing down existential anxiety? How do the ripples of someone's pain reach us? And what do we do with this pain?
The installation metaphorically explores the duality of labor of witnessing, passivity, and numbness during and after exposure to war/terror/disaster-related content, gaze, and seeing the pain of others—through the imagery in social media and news.
The performance/installation “Time Decay” (2024) is developing in many unnumbered stages and is ongoing; it combines and is not limited to installation, light, gesture, sound, sculpture, multimedia components, and olfaction, emphasizing not having a linear, structured sense of one’s existence.
Click to experience the video. Headphones are advised.
The work consists of the metal armature installation Trench, the ever-changing olfactory composition of a combination of sixth blends, 3D scan and animation, sound, fog.
Animation assistance by Shin Rung Yang (LA, US).
Music by DJ Strukturator (Kyiv, Ukraine).
Performative elements activation duration - 6:17 min.
The first-year MFA graduate student exhibition, Collapsense, was held at the Worth Ryder Gallery, UC Berkeley, in January 2024.