Performance. December 2023.
Published in ISSUE XI: COMMON GROUND.
When walking the streets of my home city of Lviv in Ukraine, on my first visit back since the start of the full-scale invasion, I started noticing shapes I’d never paid attention to before — shapes that used to blend in with the landscape of the city of my childhood so much that they almost became stone shadows. These static shadows went unnoticed. They weren’t worth stopping to look at, because they would be standing there forever.
But this time round every single statue and monument jumped out at me, wrapped in fabric and other materials, caged in huge metal cage-like structures as if they had grown overnight; as if they hadn't been standing there for decades. Although they were covered up, for the first time in my life, I saw them.
I find the concept of being caged in order to survive (explosions) an interesting one. Restriction = safety. Cage = preservation. Where does freedom lie within these strange conclusions? To survive you must wrap up, hide, reside inside of a cage whose structure never before symbolised safety. An animal is more safe in the wild than inside of a cage.
Caged To Preserve is a three-hour-long performance that happened in London in December 2023. I lie still inside of a cage for three hours. I am safe here.
Monuments above:
Пам’ятник Адамові Міцкевичу (Adam Mickiewicz Monument)
Скульптура Святого біля Латинського Катедрального Собору (Sculpture of a Saint by the Lviv Latin Cathedral)
Статуя Діви Марії (Statue of the Virgin Mary)
Commentaires