LOAD

  • Karyna Aslanova

Like a bolt from the blue, the burdens of life fall on our heads, all at once, without warning. These dreadful, dark nights of life come and we wander through them, as groundkeepers of our own tangled existence, and we don’t know where to start. Sometimes these swamps are so unbearable and inextricable that we have no choice but to plunge deeper into them, deeper in search of a solution, but this is a game without guarantees and promises, you can immerse yourself so deep that nothing will remain of you, and you can find the root removal of which is beyond your control. Obstacles, losses, failures, falls, our baggage "embellishes" the search for solutions, all this exhausts us, incinerates us, but also makes us both stronger and weirder. Recognizing and adapting to the severity, we develop calluses of the experience of existence. Very slowly we begin to notice all the contrasting elements of the overall picture; there is a burden, but there is also a back to carry it on, there is disarray, but there are hands to sort it, there is strife pouring down on all of us, but there is a sky that remains the same clean and bright before and after. With ‘LOAD’, I wanted to explore these ideas in as stark, somatic, and unambiguous way as possible. These are self-portraits, first and foremost, but so often portraits fail to capture the largest part of us, what we carry, the dark nights of life that are inside.