Franka
2023
Through this activation, Franka assumes a sense of presence and agency, questioning the boundaries between object and subject, control and submission. Positioned as an avatar, double, or alternate body, the work explores relations of power, projection, and co-authorship between the sculpture and its participants.
Textile, fiberfill, pearls, wood, acrylic
210 x 60 x 55cm
Rooted in personal mythology and informed by Kazakh shamanic beliefs, the work draws on spiritual traditions in which the soul may leave the body and, through ritual, be called back. If this bond is broken, however, the soul departs irreversibly, leaving behind an emptied form. Franka inhabits this fragile threshold between presence and absence, animation and loss, suggesting that the act of giving life is inseparable from the risk of disappearance.
As an early articulation of avatar logic, embodied presence, and ritualised interaction, the work established the conceptual groundwork for later projects, including My Dear Puppets and Long Dark Night, and marked the emergence of a methodology that combines symbolic fiction, archetypal systems, and somatic performativity.
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