Reality Will Manifest On Its Own
Light installation, video, 04’15”
glass, light
“The winter solstice is a time of long shadows. The time of the sun reaching its lowest point has in many cultures been associated with the birth of a new year, daylight hours expanding to fill the darkness.
Zhanna Gladko made her Return of Lilith video during a residency at the Nida Art Colony (Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania). Overcoming her long-standing bathophobia (fear of depths), on the day of the winter solstice the artist engaged in something akin to a ritual of reconnecting with the element of water by diving into the cold Baltic Sea.
In astronomical terms, Lilith is a fictitious point of the Moon’s maximum distance from the Earth on its orbit. The “Return of Lilith” is more than an individual gesture of the manifestation of femininity within strictly hierarchical structures and concealed powers of the shadowed side of human personality – it is also a confirmation of the mechanism of eternal recurrence of human existence, manifested in the cyclicity of life processes of individuals (humans).
Zhanna Gladko made her Return of Lilith video during a residency at the Nida Art Colony (Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania). Overcoming her long-standing bathophobia (fear of depths), on the day of the winter solstice the artist engaged in something akin to a ritual of reconnecting with the element of water by diving into the cold Baltic Sea.
In astronomical terms, Lilith is a fictitious point of the Moon’s maximum distance from the Earth on its orbit. The “Return of Lilith” is more than an individual gesture of the manifestation of femininity within strictly hierarchical structures and concealed powers of the shadowed side of human personality – it is also a confirmation of the mechanism of eternal recurrence of human existence, manifested in the cyclicity of life processes of individuals (humans).
A series of charts on transparent panels depict coded birth dates of the artist’s deceased female and male relatives, aligned with their individual life paths and correlation to the stellar sky.
During the Belarus protests of 2020, the artist collected dust from the glass on the balcony of her flat on Partizanski Avenue in Minsk, the place where columns of police trucks and armoured vehicles used by the authorities to repress peaceful marches streaming into the city centre down the road every Sunday”
During the Belarus protests of 2020, the artist collected dust from the glass on the balcony of her flat on Partizanski Avenue in Minsk, the place where columns of police trucks and armoured vehicles used by the authorities to repress peaceful marches streaming into the city centre down the road every Sunday”
from curator Anna Karpenko's text for the exhibition
“When The Sun Is Low - The Shadows Are Long ”, Arsenal Gallery, Białystok, Poland, 2022
“When The Sun Is Low - The Shadows Are Long ”, Arsenal Gallery, Białystok, Poland, 2022
Group exhibition “When The Sun Is Low - The Shadows Are Long”
Arsenal Gallery, Białystok, Poland
2022
