Maria Kulikovska (11/10/2017)
Maria Kulikovska is a crimean artist, since Crimea is a migrating peninsula this means that she could go to bed in her home at night and once awoken in the morning she is still in bed but now in a different country- a lot of her work (often using installations and performances) is very political and often causes controversy and outrage in the places in which she chooses to show her work as it is based on this factors “who am I” and “I am from everywhere, we’re all just gold dust” which in many countries unfortunately isn’t seen as true.
Kulikovska traveled and lived on a poorly kept life raft in her city for over a year after she lost her home when Crimea was occupied by Russia. As a homeless woman it must have been really hard as not many people offered Maria food, water or basic necessities. Putting up performances around her city caused outrage with the police as she was nearly arrested for ten years simply for trying to get to safe EU land with crimean documents as technically that meant that she didn’t exist- meaning she had no help with health care either which I really don’t agree with.
“We are all just dust off of stars- Gold dust” is something Kulikovska mentioned that really got my attention. I don’t believe that any two people should be treated any differently just because of who they are or where they come from as it isn’t something in which they can change or help which I think is the point that she tries to make in her pieces. One of my favorite pieces- due too how ‘strange’ it is, is ‘flowers of democracy’ which is basically quite a lot of casts made of her and her friends vaginas. Strange, I know. Kulikovska placed these pieces in strange places such as the city hall and places where there are a lot of busts created of men- In my opinion this really makes you think about the value of women in some places and how often sexist the world really is and that’s partly what I enjoyed about this lecture. I also really like the contrast between the flowers and beauty of the park compared to the casts, it does look weird but it makes me think about how delicate women can be and how beautiful every single one of them is.
Her most recent work in 2017 are her new naked casts made entirely of plastic which is dangerous to make but impossible to disappear due to plastic lasting forever. She places these seven sculptures in a public park inside west ukraine and her reasoning behind using plastic instead of soap in which she usually does use is that she is “keeping the beauty” of these naked casts, their beauty will never fade, even if the forests & parks do. I really like the fact that she has started to experiment with colour and materials more because her casts that she has added colour and chains and odd things into look really really cool!
Overall i am really happy with this guest lecture because I learned that I actually enjoy looking at sculptures which mean something as usually I only really like drawings and paintings. This session also really made me think about things from other people's perspectives- people in worse conditions than England and people who have to flee their homes for whatever reason.
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