Maria Poshkowska
ARTIST STATEMENT
Performance and multimedia artist, MA student, feminist. Works address problems of gender social studies, influencing the trauma on societies and individuals. I exploit and explore the topic of invisibility and disappearance in my work, and use repetitive hand labour as an absurdist artistic touch to crystallize the main idea of the work.
My practice is body and time-oriented, and I often work from both sides of the camera. The collaborative approach helps to expand my ability to express ideas through different media and work more with my own body in a utilitarian way — as a material. Provoking a public discussion is the main goal for me to do an art practice, and I believe that art is the most poetic way to heal and be healed. I am not an optimist, nor a pessimist — I am an art activist and this what my life is about.
Dreamcatcher
Performative photography.
Digital photo collage 5/5.
Ukrainian artist creates the work as both co-author and performer. The work was created on the island of Biryuchiy in the south of Ukraine, which is now under temporary occupation. This artwork today is a visualization of hope, resilience, and the spirit of freedom.
4 of the 5 prints belong to private collections in Ukraine, Italy, and the United States.
No name ritual
The “no-name ritual” is a metaphor for reflection on the experiences collected and lived through and the future. The project is about the importance of working with these experiences, the permanence, and routine of this process, and how it is an integral part of any journey.
The images of the main video are similar to the epic and important film for Ukraine and the reappraisal of its Soviet history, “Earth” by Oleksandr Dovzhenko. Dovzhenko endowed “Earth” with the symbolism of the mystical connection between the Ukrainian people and their land, arguing that man and nature were separated by collectivization. In this way, Maria Proshkowska and Serhiy Morgunov look back to the past and re-evaluate their experiences.
Today, after the start of the large-scale invasion, the video has taken on a new meaning, as it makes the multi-layered connection between the Ukrainians and the Ukrainian land even clearer. About half of the filming locations in the Kyiv region were occupied by Russian troops in February and March 2022 and mutilated by tank tracks.
Being a refugee everywhere even here in virtual reality, Maria tries to find a connection between her old and new life, using soil from her homeland as a fundamental basis that painfully disappears at the same time on the horizon. Understanding the impossibility of putting these memories together awakens us from our dreamlike state and makes us realize that the work of re-examining the experience should never stop so that future generations can find this archive intact.
The project consists of limited edition film photos and HD video. Authors: Maria Proshkowska and Serghiy Morgunov.
Motanka
Art Installation, 45×30 cm, a doll created with traditional Ukrainian homemade and Taiwanese fabric and stuffed with Ukrainian wheat grain burned due to a direct russian missile hit, 2024
Rethinking an important element of Ukrainian tradition — the Motanka doll — the artist creates an object made of textiles and grain which traditionally symbolizes prosperity and is a strong sacred object for Ukrainians. By hypertrophying the size of the doll, the artist draws attention to how desperately the modern world needs hope in the face of uncertainty and crisis. The layering of traditional Ukrainian fabric and Taiwanese fabric is an attempt to dive into the study of both cultures and look boldly into the most tragic chapters of their histories.
By dressing the doll, layer by layer, the artist seems to be rewinding the wound, trying to reduce the unspoken pain of destruction and war — the doll’s body is filled with Ukrainian wheat grain that was burnt as a result of a direct hit by a russian missile. The doll’s silent face with no eyes does not answer the complex questions we are posed in front of uncertainty. It stands as a testament to resilience, impervious to manipulation and propaganda. Within itself, the doll conceals the memory of generations grappling with destruction, colonization, and the relentless suppression of the quest for freedom.
Will we be able to keep this memory and transform its most painful moments into the strength to move forward? Are we brave enough to withstand whatever we may later learn from its deepest corners?
Thin (in)visible line
Art installation, 68 printed film photos, yellow tape 22 mm wide. Photos of a performative action that took place at the Treasure Hill Artist Village, Taipei, January 7th, 2024. Photographer CHIA-YU,CHOU (周佳諭)
“Working with a local art spot and its temporary area of residence, the artist creates a performative action with chalk. By drawing an almost imaginary, very vulnerable, and disappearing line around the Treasure Hill Artist Village, the artist is practically making a political statement that this territory belongs to art, is free and in this poetic way is protected from any attempts to capture and enslave it.
By creating this cultural boundary, the artist tries to create a reason to reflect on the importance of self-identification and inner freedom in the face of threats of tyranny. Can this thin, disappearing line protect this island within an island and its inhabitants? Is this all we can expect from the invasion of an insidious enemy whose task is to destroy?
Faced with the brutality of the war that came to her homeland, forced refuge, and the endless pain of realizing the consequences of destruction, the artist transforms traditional Ukrainian beliefs about women being the keepers of the home and adds a feminist context to these ideas through activism and action.
In her practice, the artist often works with the theme of the invisibility of (her) work and in this artistic message, she exploits and explores this issue again and comes to a new form of artistic expression through working with chalk.
In an attempt to find in today a connection between the future and the past, the artist draws a line that will leave only a memory”.
Labour
Single-channel 4K video, sound, 22 min 52 sec. Contains fragments of “Farina” performance documentation, which took place on September 17th, 2023 at MAMbo, Italy.
The video artwork contains fragments of the video documentation of the artist’s performance “Farina”, which took place in 2023 at MAMbo, Bologna. During the performance, the artist was making flour for 5 hours in a row from wheat grain which was burnt by a russian missile.
In this absurd and beautiful action, the artist demonstrated the value of every single grain and the price that the world pays for the aggressor’s ambitions. Here, this video is a meditative medium that invites reflection on the need of hard work to re-examine traumatic experiences.
The endless movement of the millstone is reminiscent of the cyclical nature of history and the mistakes that descendants always have to correct after previous generations. This grain was reborn from the ashes, so maybe we have a chance to do the same again?
