FEAR OF INTIMACY

2017 · "86" Film and Urban Festival, land-art program · Slavutych, Ukraine · 2021 · Lacuna International Contemporary Art Festival «Distance» · Lanzarote, Canary Islands · 2021 · Mykolaiv ART Week: CONNECT! · Mykolaiv, Ukraine ·

Concept

This work was originally created in Slavutych in 2017 as part of the land art program of the Festival of Film and Urbanism “86,” whose theme that year was Intimacy. An unexpected discovery for us was how new meanings this work acquired later, in 2021, during the global pandemic and the obsessions that accompanied it. The piece took the form of an interactive installation: two large inflatable balloons covered with sharp spikes on the outside. The balloons were vertically fixed with elastic bands in a critically close proximity. Responding to the slightest movements of air, they swayed continuously, constantly threatening to destroy one another. The work articulated a state of mutual vulnerability and passive aggression. Fear and tension accumulated, while every anxious movement only intensified them. Fear of touch, fear of closeness became a condition in which we were all living.

Artist’s visualization of how the work could be presented in a gallery space. Image generated.