The project "Trauma" aims to actualize and validate hidden and silenced traumas through the exposition of a visual-textual narrative. Reflections on the subject of traumatization and stratification of consciousness into "before" and "after" trauma are elaborated into visual-symbolic images and schemes.

Trauma is an influence, exceeding the compensatory powers of a body. As the result of this influence, something gets broken, gets torn, disappears, or changes its form.

Trauma is freezing. It immobilizes, paralyzes, fragments the world. After the trauma remain only the wreckages of a person’s familiar world.

Trauma separates a person from their body, takes away the feeling of safety, the possibility to feel and set their boundaries, communicate with the society on the rights of its valid part.
Trauma remains with a person forever. Even when the trauma is healed, a scar remains after it, which is perceptible, hurts, speaks. After the trauma, a person remains incomplete, isolated from the environment, transparent. And a person shuts down all emotions in an attempt to somehow put themselves together.

The trauma, which is timely cured and mourned over, can be healed faster. It’s terrifying to mourn over the trauma – this means to reveal your vulnerability. This other side of a person is being carefully camouflaged and hidden in the everyday battle. This side has remained from deep childhood, but it didn’t turn into a rudiment. This side has come deeper, into another dimension, into the space of the unconscious, behind the line.

Trauma is closely linked with shame. Survivors feel that they are responsible for the terrible things that happened to them. They feel unworthy of care and attention. They feel themselves like a disgusting mess. To overcome your shame, you need to pay a heavy price – to tell your secret. Every secret wants to be told. Dead bodies do not want to rest in their graves until their stories are told.

Prenarrative about the trauma is the first step to healing. One needs to rethink the trauma to feel the present and pave the way into the future. Trauma carries a conflict in itself. A person wants to protest against the trauma and put it on a back burner, and, at the same time, to speak about it and release it. To speak about the unspoken. To do this, one needs to feel safe. Trust to mourn over. The only healthy way to deal with trauma is to reach out and hold each other. Then, calmed and strengthened, we can walk out into the world. But first, we need to be able to grasp a catastrophic event and shape it into a coherent story, one that makes sense out of chaos, and regain control over our world.
People do not choose to get traumatized. Trauma enters a person’s life by itself, leaving only one choice – to live over, to overcome, to mourn over, and to narrate about. There are several types of trauma. Traumas of the body, traumas of the psyche, traumas of a family, and traumas of society. Children dwell on the past of their parents to fully understand what they’ve been through. Children don’t let themselves be happy until they take over the pain of their parents.
Trauma will never be fully cured. Recovery will never be complete. Losses and scars will remain forever. The spiral of panic and insecurity will come back over and over again. Trauma’s echoes are too loud. People, who outlived and cured their trauma resemble the plates, glued with gold.

The project “Trauma” consists of 23 big-format paintings (acrylic on canvas), each of them accompanied by descriptive narratives. The paintings are speaking about the various types of traumas (lockdown and lack of communication trauma, loss trauma, neglection trauma, depression trauma, physical trauma, immobilization trauma, etc.), and the ways to overcome and overlive these traumas. The paintings are symbolic, archetypical, and easy to perceive. They evoke associations, generate feelings, convey the states we all live in today.
Some of the paintings for the project are finished, some of them are in progress, and some of them are planned.