VOICE OF CONFLICTED LANDS. Interview with Maria Kulikovska.
I recently started a series of interview with young Ukrainian artists. In this series, I’m looking for exceptional creators who collaborate with audiences in impressive ways and interactive environments.
Let me introduce you to an extremely talented Maria Kulikovska. Her art just like her spirit was fuelled by restlessness rooted in her exile from the Crimea. I would describe Maria in various ways, "provocative", "tempestuous", "outspoken" and "fiercely ambitious." She is very spontaneous and she is an adventurer. Her art ranged across practices associated with body art, performance, sculpture, photography and film. This interview also focuses on Maria’s life and the themes she explored in her works, so I was trying to balance biography and art.
She is currently in Sweden and I am still in France, so we had our discussion via Skype. I spent many hours working on this article. However, the results exceeded all the expectations.
Yana B.: You are known as “a sculptor” and “a performance maker” – how did you get into this “stream” of work?
Maria K.: Apart from my sculptural and performative searches, which I believe are inescapably interconnected, I am still an architect. I always keep it in my mind and I even continue practicing to do art work in this field. Architecture is a kind of spatial performance; a body that is constantly changing, changing all around absorbing itself. How does a sculpture start? It starts with performance. Actually, everything starts with performance; so does architechture. Performance is all around us and it is about us. Our movements and actions, this is our life. Architecture and sculpture are the reflections and ways of performance, corporeality, body and life. I have a very special relationship with both architecture and sculpture. Though with scutpture to a lesser extent because a traditional sculpture does not excite me at all. I do not understand how anyone can aspire to such pretentious and even a bit «sick» ambitions by creating something with the materials which last for centuries. That is the main reason why I perceive architecture, sculpture and performance as an action of a body. I'm using my own body as an instrumental part of an artistic practice by reducing the distance between art and life even more.
Yana B.: Obviously, body is quite a sensitive topic, how did you approach it?
Maria K.: The matter is that I don’t separate such things. At the time when I’m in my studio, I’m an artist. When I am at home, I'm just a citizen, Masha Kulikovska. No, I cannot separate my body from my position, and I firmly believe that art exists even in the routine moments of my everyday life. It is my path, it's my choice and I don't impose it on anybody. So I don't have any special ways how to raise this topic. All the time my body is with me, and all the time I am trying to understand the essence of substance. I do not have any magic spells which immediately will explain the notion of a body and how to work with it. Yes, everything what surrounds us is represented by substance, body, and a living organism. I’m exploring physical and material transformations through body-based works because body is also the medium of artistic process. I am interested in the physical experience of the world through natural elements which shape, transform, and even erase identity.
Yana B.: Performance art has reached the mainstream and today it is really being appreciated more than ever before. Why do you think that is the case now?
Maria K.: More and more people are being born on the planet, more and more people want to change something in this world, and more and more people are choosing the path of an artist. However, it seems to me that we, artists, start to ask ourselves more and more questions like: "Who are we creating so many different pieces of art for? Where are we going to store them? Should we continue to use the resources of our planet? In other words, do we have to “litter” Earth with all these creations and ideas? Perhaps that's why performance is getting more and more demanding so quickly.
Yana B.: However, performance does seem to be a challenging medium. A performance artist is difficult to place because he/she has no a clear artwork for sale. What do you think about your financial future as a performance artist?
Maria K.: Honestly speaking, now I am thinking about finding a «normal» job.
Yana B.: You mentioned that performance captures many different sides of you. Do you think there were any sides that you were missing? What do you want to perform in the near future?
Maria K.: I am going to start printing photos. When Putin sent his troops to the Crimea, and then closed the borders, and now my parents can’t visit Ukraine anymore. When I realized that I probably would never see my homeland again, this land and sea where I grew up, met sunrises and sunsets. The land where I spent all my childhood and adolescence, when all that seemed to you to be so good, so natural and familiar. All this remains only in your memory now, like a mirage. When I saw my mom last (she came with my dad to Kiev immediately after Russian troops entered. They didn’t have enough money to stay in Kiev even for one month so they had to go back to the Crimea), she gave me all their photos from the Orange Revolution because it’s not safe any more to keep them. In Kerch if they find them, they can do with you whatever they want. The same situation is with old developed film rolls. Pictures have never been printed from that film. Those are the shots of our family picnics and trips to the sea coast. So now I want to print all this "void" on huge glass sheets. I want to try to "perpetuate" such fragile and cherished dreams of returning back to the quiet life of my family, to keep these magical landscapes, sunsets, my Crimean nights which were so vulnerable. That's what I want to do it now. I just have to do it or I’ll go crazy. I also want to go to Moscow and start screaming for a long time, so painfully strong, so hard so that everybody could hear me.
Yana B.: While you were performing any of the pieces that you've done so far, have you ever felt like you are faking it or being insincere? Do you have any moments when you doubt yourself?
Maria K.: I doubt myself constantly, especially for the last couple of months it’s been happening more and more often. So I decided not to make any plans or strategies, but follow the only direction which is to stay true to my own principles, to be honest with myself, and to live every minute as if it’s the last one to enjoy the air, the trees and the flowers around you. I choose to appreciate the fact that parents have legs, arms, eyes. I can breathe and think. The most important is to keep thinking, a lot and in a critical way, but not to criticize everything and everyone near you. To some certain extent, I try to escape and be an objective matter itself, like the body. You have to be true to the voice inside of you and not to be affected by other people. It’s important to believe in your work.
And as to hypocrisy, I'm not an actress and I do not play most of my performances. It’s like a process of creating a "crumbling sculpture", and sometimes the process itself is more important than the result, as well as with a sculpture when a process of destruction is much more important than a normal condition. In other words, our performance is a process of living. Life adjusts itself. It directs, it produces and indicates performance. And even when I was screaming into the ground, one could reproach me and say, “But this has been prepared beforehand.” Well, that’s not true … the only things I’ve prepared are the ground and the dress, which appeared at the last moment, but emotions of cry and tears, it was all real. I’ve never rehearsed this process. First, it was the feeling of understanding that I just need it, or I will die, and then when I started performance I didn’t know that I would cry and have a cramp, that it would be so frustrating and painful, it’s cold....
Yana B.: Do colors and materials express an immediate meaning of your shows?
Maria K.: Yes. Material is the most important for everything I do. More than fifty percent of all codes, meanings, concepts, values are contained in the material. The choice of material is my priority, the text, all the messages, the whole idea is based on it. Now about the color, it's less important because the material dictates which color it will be. Though, if I choose some particular color it's some kind of a message as well, nothing is accidental. Generally, there is nothing unforseen in all my performances, even the smallest details. For example, my wedding: the fact that my dress was black , and two bouquets of purple tulips, that was not a coincidence. Now these tulips will provide the basis for a new series of paintings, and these bouquets can give much more than just beautiful flowers. Those are symbols, signs, codes and hints, explanations.
Yana B.: While watching your video "To be or not to be" /“SOMA”, I felt like I had to adjust to a slow rhythm of the film, trying to forget my need for a clear understanding of the symbolic content. Please, help me to relate this visual information to a single meaning.
Maria K.: That wasn't me. Do you rememeber what is the most important in that video? At the very beginning you hear the words of Hitler. He was speaking very slowly, with a soft voice, absolutely without any subtleties, as if it's supposed to be like this … we love to sing, and dance, and listen to the music, to see beautiful women and enjoy their beauty becuase we are humans and this is so natural for us … First, I, so to say, just played along with the audience and then struck a blow. Don’t we, women, still have to hear that we’re only some kind of stuff for men? That we exist only to sing, dance, listen to the music, enjoy, etc. And still we’re not humans but objects or methods to enjoy ourselves, just for fun. And yes, I did strike a lot of blows by cunning, I’d even say cruel but indecisive method, slowly, as if I was dancing, and after that – BOOM …
Yana B.: Has the type of a personal meta-language already been founded?
Maria K.: I think that I will always be in active search. Probably, the search itself is my main metaphysical language. My art is grounded on the belief in one universal energy which runs across everything.
Yana B.: How would you describe the role of an artist in society?
Maria K.: In my opinion, an artist exists in every person in the world. It can be a doctor, a writer, a journalist, a politician, a cleaner, an architect, a priest .... In short, we all are artists, just working at different platforms and speaking different languages. Well, nowadays I do not understand those who say that art is apolitical and asocial, that's not true at all. Everything about art (not craft) is extremely critical, and as I said before, I want to make series of photos with the Crimean landscapes. Their value is already much more than just a pretty picture for pleasure, it is generally about something else. So even the landscape can serve as the language of criticism, reflection, meditation and lots of questions. An Artist is a machine that produces these new languages.
Yana B.: What is the riskiest thing you’ve ever done?
Maria K.: Forming the body and head. I still fear it as the devil fears the holy water. The very first time I did it I had been puking all night long, and then I had to call a mental hospital. A very sharp and cognitive dissonance happened to me. The second time it was in public, on the street, it was only 5 degrees Celsius above zero and I was completely naked. My head was stuck, and then threads under the cast were tangled and they began to strangle me and tear my ear; I was choking. But I couldn't say anything, because the plaster turned into stone already. It weighed more than 15 kg and it was burning my skin and it was pain in the neck. The third time it was in Donetsk when the whole body was being formed. I was preparing for "Homo Bulla", the temperature was 50 degrees Celsius above zero. We did everything in the hangar and there wasn’t any fresh air inside and it felt like in a thermos. This time I was being formed not limb after limb but the whole body at once. And when I was covered by this stone skin it felt like more than 60 degrees, and, I apologize for such details, but in intimate places it seemed to be all 80. When the form was finally removed from me, my skin was removed with it at some places and there were very severe burns in others. But there are always complications in any type of production and in this case especially when you work with sculpture and other natural materials. You can’t help escaping any injuries or difficulties. Sometimes it is just like in the kitchen when you’re cooking something. And when I did "Soma" it was my most difficult project, to my mind. I slept no more than 2 or 3 hours per day within the whole month. Nothing went the way I wanted till the moment of the opening, and all these emotions and stress were extremely annoying. I would jump up in bed because I was hallucinating and suffocating. I would scream while asleep because I was afraid not to finish on time. And as to the scars and bruises, every day during the preparations I was awarded by new markings, and now these scars do not let me forget those sleepless nights and days of bitter salt.
Yana B.: What path did you take to become such a remarkably different person and artist? Were there any significant turning points in your life?
Maria K.: Oh, thank you very much for your compliment. I can say that despite of my social activities and my love for people, I'm quite a lonely person. I’m a loner. Since I spend most of the time by myself it is somehow difficult to identify any special or extraordinary features in my behavior. I noticed that strange things happen to me all the time. I’m the so called Mrs. Drama.
Yana B.: I'm curious to know you, not only in the frame of creative process, but also outside of art as a person with her original destiny, lifestyle and the way of thinking. Tell me about some sorts of "strangeness" of your character, your "anomalies" in everyday life.
Maria K.: I love to play with toys, I have a lot of them. Just cannot stand mess in the kitchen and in the bathroom. These are the most sacred places in my house. Other than that I do not think I have any special habits in everyday life. Generally, I am not whimsical. I can live in a cardboard box, and I like to sleep on the floor without a pillow. I do not occupy much space, and I am very calm and silent with the family, but I love to play with toys.
Yana B.: A few words about your marriage with the Sweden girl. You wanted to draw the public’s attention to a variety of problems. Are you satisfied with the media feedback?
Maria K.: A few days ago, she got her master's degree, and her thesis represented the project we did together, a joint installation, or better to say, our piece of art which was shown in Bildetmeseet. We won a prize for this installation. As to the media, I don’t think I am really pleased. During all my interviews I always talk about this project (my fictitious same-sex marriage), but they usually cut this part in the final version of the article. There was another unpleasant situation concerning this project. The whole idea was stolen by our friend without any reference to our names. A human rights activist and femenist from Sweden, who two months before did the same as we did, she got married to a Swedish artist. She announced that this marriage allowed to raise the issue of gay marriages and the position of women in society. She is running for the government using the idea of this project. I met her 2 months before she started this project and asked her to become our moderator in our open discussion platform. To make the story shorter, I think this is another aspect of this project. And I am here now in Sweden in order to have another interview.... if this project still raises a lot of questions then it still requires the resonance which could be achieved.
Yana B.: I know you are originally from the Crimea. By the way I am from Odessa. And I completely understand your feelings about this nightmare. How do you think is going to happen to us (artists, creators, culture workers) in the future? How are we able to impact the possible changes?
Maria K.: What will happen to us? I do not know. If I were a politician or had the right to pass laws - then I might be able to answer this question. And to be honest, every second there’s a million of questions in my head - what shall we do, what shall we be, what happens next? ? ? I know that I know nothing. Frankly speaking, I’m going through a difficult life crisis and there are more questions than answers. That's one thing I know for sure that I have to work hard. I need to dissolve and multiply, as if I don't exist at all, to turn into shadow and become a litmus paper which absorbs all new things and then processes all the received information, sorts it out and interprets it in its own way. As for activism, it seems to me that we, artists, must continue to work and be with people to express their thoughts and defend their social position, to help Ukraine, both the South and the East. I do not know whether I have the right to say it now, but I think more and more often I think of joining the army. Although I don’t support violent methods of to resolve a conflict, but somebody has to protect us from the outright fascism and Nazism, and from this frenzied Russian aggression. Now I am saving money for my own bulletproof vest, and I already have a taser and a knife!
