Touch me, Touch me not? But walk barefoot please.
2018
An installation in three parts
Participatory Migrational Object
This bacterial looking object functions as a constructed ingress, a screen and a visual filter. It is a porous veil constructed by deconstructing maps, forming a pattern by cracking the territories and terrains within a Czech geography rendering the final object anywhere and everywhere, Detaching an identity from within the border.
The hands that contributed to the creation of this object are all migrational - an Azerbaijani, a Bosnian, a Cyprian, an Indian and a Russian - each identity coming in with its stories and migrational baggage; some more than others.
Touch me, Touch me not
The Green spaces within the floating cities are deconstructed and used as a metaphor for the social spaces within them, their unanchored floating - a sense of being groundless and dispersed. These cities are the spaces called home over the years - Madras (now Chennai), Bombay (now Mumbai), Pune (formerly Poona), Bangalore (now Bengaluru), Prague and Ostrava.
Inspired by Flusser’s idea of vegetarianism (not the devouring of plants, but looking at life from a plant's perspective) certain plants have been chosen that have an inverse relationship to the society they are found in.
India is warm and crowded - a touch, a grope, a helping hand and some judgment is always around the corner. When one wants space the constant presence of the societal can be overwhelming, the Mimosa Pudica that shuts down as soon as one touches them possibly share this overwhelmed feeling.
Czech Republic, on the other hand, is cold socially and geographically. A touch, a smile, a grope, a helping hand and some judgement keeps its distance. In a space where the societal is never as directly attached to one’s existence the netykavka (translated to do not touch) have explosive seed pods that burst with joy when touched. The plants used in this installation come from the same family of impatiens, from the family of the netykavka genus, the specie in the wild that explodes is considered an invasive specie in the Czech Republic. I wonder though if after years of domestication to become beautiful flowering plants would they ever produce explosive pods. This one did not.
Walk barefoot please
The deconstructed parts of the specific hanging cities around this grass pathway are the green areas within those specific geographical boundaries, grassy enclaves within the urban where one is welcome to walk barefoot. The 18 square meters of grass that created a pathway around the installation was an invitation to be barefoot, to blur the boundaries between the constructed and the comparatively unconstructed below our bare feet. To allow a sense of tactile touch from your fingertips to your toes while you touched the plants that hung at chest level.
