STEPS
Atomic shelter D-O,
Konjic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2013
THE ARTWORK
I have imagined this work as the vanishing of a body within a space; in fact, as a glide through an image (which confounds like a kiss).
The space welcoming a visitor changes continuously and slowly. It resembles a frozen lake while a body, as it walks across, tells a story of its turmoils or, perhaps, those of an epoch.
What is memory? How should we confront nostalgia that overwhelms us every time we look at the past? Should we live with it as if it were an immobile thing or as an ever-changing story?
In this work, the past presents itself like a surface of a turbulent sea or like an interior of a gigantic kaleidoscope. The semi-circularity of the once-upon-a-time space is rediscovered here in the center of a spyglass through which we can observe the passage of time in all directions.
The mirror placed on the ground is crushed (as we walk over it). And as the mirror breaks in ever-smaller pieces, it loses its rigidity and becomes malleable, plastic (sculpted). The space itself becomes elusive. The sound of visitors’ steps helps further reinvent this work by turning it into an “audio-image.” High and low sounds relate to each other like heaven protruding into hell or fire flared by air.