BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF

By incorporating elements of memory and symbolism into the artistic performance, Maria aims to touch upon a shared cultural consciousness and create a work of art that will resonate with a wide audience. Recognizing how our memory is influenced by history, the archaeology of space, ethical values, and human existence, the performance touches on universal aspects, but also the specific cultural and personal sensibilities in which we live today, at the end of November 2023

Sheep skins, pottery, hawthorn branches, fish symbols and a mirrored floor on which you are no longer you, you are a wolf or a dog in the desert or at the bottom of the ocean as it was millions of years ago. In all of Mаria Gvardeitseva's installations and performances you are immersed as in a terrible dream, or to put it another way, the artist talks to your "unconscious": who you are, what are your ethical and social roles, what is your collective and personal memory. How ready are you for reincarnations and at what speed can they occur in you?

In a situation where boundaries are blurred, where information is devalued by the so-called "information war", where it is impossible to distinguish truth from lies, Maria uses the IA technique to create a video work with a scorpion burrowing into the sand. Against a background of gloom and inaction, the scorpion represents a kind of fear, the horror of what happens when you run away from information. He doesn't want to be part of people and confront them, but at the same time he can mortally wound them. The scorpion does not immediately attack a person and only bites when it feels threatened, as well as when it is forced into a dark corner or when a person puts on shoes or clothes in which it has hidden.

“If everyone always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that no one believes anything at all anymore — and rightly so, because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, to be ‘re-lied,’ so to speak.” Hannah Arendt

From Susan Sontag's book “Regarding the Pain of Others”: “Perhaps too much value is assigned to memory, not enough to thinking. Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead. So the belief that remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans, who know we are going to die, and who mourn those who in the normal course of things die before us – grandparents, parents, teachers and older friends. Heartlessness and amnesia seem to go together. But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of a collective history. There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited. 

In our modern world, memories are often contested and their meanings are manipulated and questioned. People generally believe that they are free to think and feel their own thoughts and feelings, when in fact they draw some of their shared thoughts and feelings, and memorialization rituals play an important role here. It is important for the artist to recognize that our thoughts and feelings are not entirely our own, but are shaped by our shared experiences and collective memory. Our rituals of commemoration play an important role in reinforcing these shared memories and shaping our perception of the past.