Non-acquaintance

The participatory project “Non Acquaintance” is an artistic reflection on communication and identification processes in society. 

As social connections increasingly become a public domain with the shift to the web, the question arises: Is it easy to exist in this evaluative space? Is it easy to exist in the evaluative space of this publicity? How effective are tools aimed at fostering social connections? Do they help us be understood and accepted by society?

By involving the participants in the project, I am at the same time making it more personal to myself. By addressing the border zone between the personal and the private, I try to find a way to penetrate the nuances of interpersonal interaction and make the experience of communication more sensitive.

The project consists of three phases. 

“Exercises of entropy”, 2021-2022

During the first phase, the focus was on an experimental form of remote interaction with strangers where photos from them were the only source of information for me. To eliminate potential bias and maintain anonymity, Yana Grischuk mediated the interaction, selecting and contacting participants while preserving full confidentiality. Eight anonymous individuals from different geographical contexts took part at this stage. 

Participant was asked to submit a photograph that excluded any visible trace of their own physical presence, while still holding personal emotional significance. The result was a collection of images that were intimate yet depersonalized—visual fragments suspended between affect and anonymity. 

With no knowledge of the participants’ names, gender, appearance, location, or background, I engaged with the images through the medium of abstract painting. This method enabled me to deconstruct each photograph intuitively, responding to its emotional and formal resonance through the structure. Alongside these visual form, I maintained a set of personal annotations—observations, questions, and impressions that arose during the process. 

The culmination of this phase was a series of personal calls with participants. These conversations retroactively introduced us to one another, overlaying the abstract interpretive experience with a more conventional mode of acquaintance. 

“Identification reliefs”, 2021-2022

The second phase of the project transfer the abstract paintings from the first phase into tactile ceramic models. These sculptural forms are developed by following the structural and compositional cues of the original paintings, bringing them to life in relief. The resulting objects are designed to be explored through touch, enabling visually impaired individuals to interact with the material through their senses.
At the same time, the models function as intimate interfaces, providing a way for one person to experience another person’s emotional imprint through physical contact.

“Pseudonyms”, 2021-2024

The “Pseudonyms” is the final phase of the project.
Comprising seven textile masks, the project’s third part is informed by an anonymous sociological survey conducted by the artist during one of the 2021 exhibitions, encompassing insights from 140 respondents. This survey, aimed at probing behaviors across diverse communicative scenarios, serves as the foundational bedrock for the ensuing artistic expression.
Through subsequent analysis and categorization of the survey data, I identified seven distinct groups of behaviors. Each mask created serves as a physical embodiment of one of these identified patterns, offering an interpretation of a kind of defense mechanism in communication, which at the same time can play the role of an identification image.
However, these masks not only reflect subjective behavior, but also serve as a reflection of my own perceptions. This exposes the lens through which social dynamics are observed and interpreted, highlighting the inherent subjectivity woven into the fabric of social interaction.