Vacuum

Artists Natalia Papaeva
Genre Video
Edition Survival 17

[…] In her performance for the camera lens recorded in the former Jewish Hospital, Natalia Papaeva recites mantras – vocal vibrations intended to cleanse the mind and body, which she learned from her grandmother. Drawing on family tradition and intergenerational knowledge, the artist uses mantras to deal with anxiety, stress and fear. At the same time, as suggested by the title Vacuum, these soothing rituals evoke a sense of loneliness, since she expects help from an imagined deity rather than a real person. Solitude, a sense of seclusion and alienation are threads that appear in various contexts at the exhibition, but all of them hint at a worrying diagnosis concerning the condition of the modern individual and society, struggling with repressed fears, pent-up feelings and traumas. […]

Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz: Concealed. In: Art Reviev SURVIVAL 17. Catalogue, Wrocław 2019, p. 37.

 

photo: Małgorzata Kujda