Olena Morozova

According to the WHO, in 2023 there are more than 55 million people with dementia worldwide. 7.7 million new cases are reported yearly, each one become a significant burden on families and health systems. Dementia is an acquired degeneration of the brain characterized by a persistent decrease in cognitive activity with a loss of previously acquired knowledge and practical skills. From the very first manifestations to severe forms, patients require care and social support.

I started researching problem of dementia when my grandmother was diagnosed with it. We talked about her illness so that she does not lose touch with reality. I also involved my children in this process, which was very helpful. Glimpses of her complex and interesting character are like pearls that you acquire through the hard work of constant communication.

These moments dear to our hearts, the chronicle of the struggle against "the darkness" and visions from a past life: military childhood, interesting youth, medical practice in the cruel inhuman conditions of the Russian hinterland, are the essence of the project, which has become more than a project for me.

At a certain moment, I felt the need to photograph her in those moments when she talks about her visions. I have traced a clear relationship between memories, strong impressions and fears from my grandmother's past and painful visions in the present.

There is no happy ending in this struggle, the illness always wins, and this dread is visible. When phantasmagorias merge with reality it's always scary, and the only thing that can help is the attention of relatives and closeness.

I first started to think about death when I was seven years old. Back then, the word was something very mysterious, strange and frightening to me. I remember that I often thought about becoming immortal.

At around the age of 12 or 13, I desperately didn't want to grow up. I wanted to remain a little girl. My personal growing up and the aging of others really frightened me. Still, love-adventure events and domestic matters shifted my focus a bit. Until one day, when I was walking with my eldest son Sasha, who was 4 at the time, by the hand along the path in the yard of our apartment complex and suddenly I stopped, I felt sick and the thought began to throb in my head: "How on earth does this happen? This is how people live for a while and die". And fifteen minutes later my husband called me and said: "Your sister is gone."

I went into shock and my psyche stayed there long enough, because eight days later I gave birth to my daughter and I really wanted to enjoy motherhood instead of living through grief. So, my grief was preserved inside me, I couldn't accept her death then... Ten years passed and I felt the urge to do a project about my little sister. A project about exploring my personal relationship with death through awareness of her passing.

In creating this project, I wanted to live and let go of a trauma that had been frozen inside me, to explore my sensitivity to distant events, my intuition and childhood premonitions about my sister never having children, to reflect on notions of life and death, reality and illusion, the state of play in its various manifestations.

Most of the photographs from the culminating (red) part of the project were taken after 24 February. These photographs are at the same time a reflection on the events in Ukraine, which had a very strong impact on me and raised and reactivated an old trauma in me.

The series contains several layers of references to the evolution of our perception of corporeality: the ancient body as a temple of the divine, the humiliation of the physical for the sake of high spirituality in the Middle Ages, the cult of the body in totalitarian regimes as the basis of a healthy spirit, modern body positivity as acceptance of one's body vs body-shaming... And finally, the era of transhumanism is coming, when bodily imperfections can be easily corrected through symbiosis with machines, and life can be extended indefinitely. That is, to stop being hostages to human flesh, the decay of which is an obstacle to the process of self-realisation and self-transformation.

But any progress comes with a price and a sacrifice, stemming from the living traditions and rituals of the past. How will dangerous experiments like Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future or Ducournot's Titan turn out? Utopia or dystopia? Immortality or the end of the human?

The digital defragmentation of the body with a controversial assemblage of its parts is an artistic deconstruction of all these ideas, including through the optics of socio-cultural identity (privilege, subordination, freedom). The body has always been a platform for debate for ideologies, a pretext for cultural and political manipulation.

Some of the fragments are quite realistic, others are deformed, as if there is an aberration of vision that distorts familiar forms, as if we are trying to focus on something that is constantly slipping away. These surrealistic games are enhanced by multi-coloured lighting. We find ourselves in a theatre of alternative corporeality, where instead of the certainty of anatomy, there is a chaotic set of elements for paradoxical reconstruction and a new corporeality as a reflection of our fear of it. The result is unpredictable.

I like to explore the theme of spirituality and sexuality. I have often asked myself: Is there a boundary where one ends and another begins? To find an answer to this question, I decided to turn to the story of Ishtar – goddess of love. 

In the times of Sumerian civilization, goddess Ishtar was greatly appreciated. Both men and women worshipped to her, considered her the main goddess and patroness for people. Thus people were idealizing woman, deifying her femininity, sensuality and creative power of her instinctive nature. Female sexuality was thought to be an integral part of her spiritual nature. 

While communicating with my daughter, photographing her for many years, seeing her as my reflection, I have always dreamed and aimed to recreate an archetypal image of the goddess of love. Image full of sensuality, where creative feminine nature would be combined in one with spirituality. Image that would show energy and sense of feminine beauty from one side and reflect natural human multiplicity from the other.

This is a story of how a usual building project has turned into a theater, the workers – into actors, and the construction site into the performance.
Regret…
Regret was exactly the feeling that overwhelmed me back then.

It was a long period when I was sadly watching the construction of the house, that was going on in front of my windows.

But gradually regret turned into curiosity and fun! I began to draw a parallel between construction site and theater. A true theatrical performance with interesting decorations, various lighting, colors and restless actors start taking place in front of my eyes. This story once again proved me that our beliefs work for us. I believe that positive things can be found everywhere and in everything.