For the last years I have been working exclusively on a series of installations, deeply influenced by the issue of refugees, of which I have personal experience since my childhood has been marked by several changes of all sorts of dwellings. My own experience, coupled with the mass movements of populations in neighboring countries (in the Middle East and the Balkans), led me to this choice of theme. Thus, I began to create a series of tents with multiple meanings. Tents made of a variety of fabrics and structured in a style that refers to Middle Eastern architecture (arches, domes, etc). Lace, muslin, leather provide an ironic twist to the subject matter. Given the materials and the shapes chosen, my works take an ironic stance on the issue of refugees directed not towards the refugees themselves but towards those responsible for making them refugees. I have been primarily concerned with personal architecture – body architecture, based on the concept of man’s essential escape from dire socio-political situations. I create uniforms and bags containing tents and very tools, which make escaping possible in any way. Boats and oars, flying sleeping bags, they are all escape and survival tools.
On the first reading, my works are tangible objects, but in reality, they belong to the realm of fiction. As the work progressed, a particular hero also took shape: the snail-man. Though his origins can traced to comics, he is not a superhero, saviour of the underprivileged. He is a normal everyday guy, himself the victim of socio-political circumstances, who manages to find escape routes; literary. He travels dressed in costumes based on the idea of body architecture and, carrying his home-tent on his back, he rows his way across oceans or simply walks the waves. He cannot wait to travel into space too, which I hope will be possible in the short future…
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