Mixed media (materials: wood, silicone cloth, UF printing on fabric, clay, plastic, silicone, organic elements, luminous element, suspension cable)

As an emotional response, the pandemic brought to life various forms of anxiety and frustration, to combat which many people mastered new rules for organizing their working day, new practices of self-discipline, turning to manual labor, and needlework. Skidan, who explores the problems of dark ecology and posthumanism in her practice, sublimated the feeling of longing for nature by turning to work with sculpture, an experiment with a plastic form that helps to capture and recompensate for a missing contact with nature and to sing praises to the dying world in the material. For the artist, working on sculpture has become a new form of meditative activity that improves self-discipline and a helps to live according to timetable. These installations are not persistent mutations, they can evolve beyond. Working on this project I was influenced by an B.P. Presiado’s article “Learning from the virus”, especially a few main points: “ we should try to mutate like a virus”, “inside form of the mutation”, “move away from the mutation imposed to the mutation of the chosen one”. In this way I rethink the nature of materiality.

MOMMA, Moscow
2020