A SCULPTURE ALSO HAS STORY TO TELL
"How can we find our place in society without losing our authentic selves?" Join me on this artistic journey as we discover the beauty and depth of our cultural heritage.
MY ART PRACTICE
My art practice is founded on the exploration of identity, drawing inspiration from my Roma heritage.
I use materials and techniques inherited from my father to create narratives that reflect my childhood experiences and Roma roots.
Materials, such as copper or willow branches, and techniques such as basket making, are for me attached to certain long past stories. The inspiration felt from these loaded materials guides working towards a shared past and present endpoint, with visual forms manifest in drawings transformed into sculptures or installations. This process of transformation often feels unfinished; in fact, it seems never-ending, continuously requiring new techniques and materials to articulate fresh narratives from which the artwork emerges. Performance art felt so natural when it arose from my art practice, such as my father's technique of weaving baskets out of willow branches. It opened doors into the unknown, where much is unpredictable and full of surprises.
Have you ever tried to listen to the sound of willow reeds, soil or red copper? What are they telling us? Has storytelling been existing since man first looked up at the sky, or does it go back much further than our existence?
Is there a language of storytelling that existed way long before human languages were invented? Perhaps these languages are everywhere, but somehow, we no longer have access to them. That’s because we are more in our heads than ever before.
I tell stories about my childhood in Slovakia and my Roma roots. Through my performances I try to connect to new stories that my sculptures want to tell.
I feel there is an unspoken language that we understood but which we lost touch with over time. By inviting the materials into the process of creation, we can get a little closer to this forgotten language.
I would like to highlight a special duo performance I did with my mother Silvia Farkašova at Kunstnach, Stadsschouwburg, Nijmegen.
This was the first time my mother visited the Netherlands and the first time I had the opportunity to share and give her a better insight into my art practice, and I thought the best way to do this was a duo performance where she is given complete freedom to create a new narrative through interaction with me and my sculptures, which carry our shared stories from the past.
