Ukrainian Garden View 2022 (Jane Laptiy)
The young Ukrainian artist Jane Laptiy, who also works with ROTOR Graz, found a “bomb shell” in her grandmother’s garden and asked us if we could implement a project in the kunstGarten showing one or more impact shells in black soil in a raised bed, from which lilies slowly grow and then open their white fragrant flowers. She writes:Â I thought of this project as a metaphorical project about reviving life.
Yevgenia Laptii (c) Jane Laptiy
Yevgenia Laptii 30 years old. She was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She graduated from the Kharkiv Art Academy of Design and Arts (specialty «History of Arts»). She has participated in various group and solo exhibitions in Ukraine, Italy, Germany Portugal and Austria. She is a laureate of the 2018 NonStopMedia contest.
Artist Statement
I started my career as a photographer in 2016. It was then that I started doing my first photo project, in which I was inspired by the culture of romanticism and the nature of the village where I lived. The village in the Kharkiv region, which I moved to in 2016, played a big role in my development as an artist.
Picturesque landscapes, in a sense, neglect, freedom inspired me to create deeply romantic images, imbued with individuality and alienation from the world, bustling. She created photographs in which man is an integral part of nature, she is inscribed in the landscape, she complements it. It is through the realization of «man-part of nature» came the realization that the human body is its largest «organ» of interaction with this world. Man is a part of the universe, and it is through the body that he knows the world. I believe that in our society the body in many respects acts as an element of propaganda, it is vulgarized and slandered, true intimate corporality is taboo. In my work I create a separate mythological system where the body lives in harmony with the environment, it is not taboo, it is not hidden, it lives by the laws of the universe. This is where I see a chance to change established cultural paradigms.
In all my work, I use Photoshop. After all, all my pictures are only a kind of preparation for the further «creation» of photography. As an artist, I am not interested in the immediacy of the moment, on the contrary, I create works that are purely fictional. Reflection with the environment occurs through a complete change and transformation of the form. In this way, the external world acquires other sessions, the moment that exists here and now and is relayed through the photo, is stretched, leveled and serves only as a blank for the creation of new artistic forms and symbolic sessions.
That is, I strive to show the surrounding world through the prism of the internal, symbolism and mythologizing of everyday life. After all, you can grasp the moment only by «stretching» it in time.
Jane Laptiy has announced her return from Ukraine to Graz for 15 December.
There were virtual and then real meetings beforehand, an adaptation of her proposals to the situation in the kunstGarten. A model was developed by kunstGarten. For our part, sponsors and subsidy donors were also sought and thankfully found.
We start with
Part I: The basic form – the habitat. Sketches. Calculation. Adaptation to the artistic specification: Irmi & Reinfrid in consultation with Zhenia. Procurement of materials: Irmi & Reinfrid.
First, the basic lines for the construction of the raised bed are determined. The material is cleaned and stored. After the lawn is lifted, fleece strips are laid for the split foundation so that the tuff bricks (Scherf) can be laid horizontally (coulter by coulter). Twigs and branches and autumnal plant perennials are placed in the raised bed. Taus & Reinfrid. December 2022.
In spring, it is filled with tree cuttings, dead winter plant remains, and on top of that, other filling material – green cuttings, sheep’s wool, leaves, garden soil bought and transported by trailer, and finally the black earth (sun soil): Reinfrid & Taus in February 2023.
Part I
Part 2 takes place when the “bomb” has been acquired and can be placed: Death & Destruction.
Unfortunately, the Ministry of the Army cannot provide us with a real launched missile, although we are also a museum. Not as big as the Army Museum. Is that the reason? Our rocket builder Martin Huth delivers on 15 March.
Part 3: After the rocket is placed, the lily bulbs, which arrived on 7 March, are sunk into the ground and watered in after being accurately measured: Zhenia, Reinfrid & Irmi.
An attempt to give birth to new life. 16 March.
Part II & II
Part 4: The bulbs sprout. There is hope. First openig planned for 13th of May 2023.
Part 5: The lilies are blooming and fragrant, overgrowing the bombs: life has returned. 2nd Opening!
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
We thank A9 and BMKOES and the generous sponsors for “Tufa” and “Black Earth” Jürgen Scherf und Gerald & Dominik Dunst:
Land Steiermark
BMKOES
Sonnenerde