In a Tribeca Gallery, Ukrainian Artist's 'Cleansing' from Devastation of War

Maria Kulikovska nears the end of her performance "Lustration/Ablution" at the gallery Mriya. "It was very symbolic that I did this here in the U.S.," she said, "because the finish of the war will be decided here."
Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib 

Two life-size castings by Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska [1] of her own pregnant body (one of which is embedded with bullet casings recovered from her embattled homeland) stand among the paintings and other works in her show at the Tribeca gallery Mriya. A few years ago another of her pregnant facsimiles had been displayed in a museum in Donetsk, Ukraine, when Russians occupied the city and pro-Russian militants took over the building. There they used her “body” for target practice. The invaders later turned the museum into a prison.

“They told Russian journalists, this will happen to the real bodies of those who disagree with them,” she said in an interview.

Downstairs in the gallery are casts of the artist’s feet and hands. “When I got to know this story,” the artist recalled, “I started making body parts of me, as separate pieces in memory of those who died in the area.”

Kulikovska’s multimedia exhibition, “Once Leda Found an Egg—Blue Like a Hyacinth,” organized by Rukh Art Hub [2], is on view until March 5 at Mriya, 101 Reade St.

Unable to return to her home in Crimea after its annexation, Kulikovska and her partner Oleh Vinnechenko lived in Kyiv until they, with their newborn daughter, were forced to flee in 2022.

Now based in London, Kulikovska, 36, often uses her own body to personify dual struggles that she views as related, for female bodily autonomy and for an end to suffering in her war-torn country. On Feb. 24, she performed “Lustration / Ablution,” in which she silently immersed herself in a bathtub, scrubbing and peeling a soap sculpture of her head, which she sometimes refers to as her clone. The physically and emotionally exhausting act is meant as a symbolic cleansing of trauma and pain from the war and her forced displacement. 

Two days after photographing the performance I showed pictures to the artist and asked her to talk about what she was thinking and feeling at that time. The responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Photographs by Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Usually, when I do this performance, I never stay still. But in this case, the room was a wide cube, so I just didn't know how to enter. So I stood still for a long time to be ready for that performance. It was my way also to postpone what I have to do. 

While I was carrying this bust of myself, my clone, and began washing it, it reminded me of when I just gave birth to my child. It was five months before the full-scale invasion. I had not recovered 100% from my cesarean. Every time when there was an air raid during the night, we would run from the 21st floor. To carry the child would be impossible. I felt like it weighed 50 or 100 kilograms. I had a lot of memories, flashbacks of that time.

Very often I was thinking about my daughter while I was washing the clone, like how to explain why we’re in this place. How to talk to her about why she can't see her grandma and grandfather, how to talk about war, how to explain what that is. She doesn't understand why we are not in Ukraine, even though she knows that there is a war. But I can't simplify it, I can't explain it because I don't even understand it myself. 

I was trying to answer for myself all these questions, and then I was thinking, maybe I'm not good mom, because I was screaming at her the other day, I was so tired. I didn't have resources to be nice. I just wanted to be by myself, and then I'm like, oh, I just wish to have my own studio back. I'm so tired of this fucking war. I just want to go home. 

Somehow I wanted to change this already damaged face which represented so much pain and trauma, and my hands didn't have enough strength to do so. So I said, okay, I will use my feet.

I was trying to wash my back and at the same time I was laying down, kind of resting because the performance was quite intense and hard and I was tired. 

I was thinking, oh, finally I have a small piece of the clone, which is more comfortable to hold, a piece of my own head in soap so I finally can wash myself properly. But then I felt some kind of disgust by this because it reminds me of blood or meat or, I don't know, a dead body. So I threw it away.

I hate this performance, honestly, I really hate it. It's so emotionally difficult.

Towards the end of the performance the clone of me didn't look like me anymore, and I found it beautiful. I was thinking that it's good to be less personal sometimes, especially in front of the audience. And it was a moment of in a way liberation. 

The water was extremely cold and I was sometimes shaking. And then an assistant brought me warm water and it warmed up. Finally I’m feeling I'm not just only a body that has damaged itself. But I'm also alive. And it was a relief, a little moment of relief.

I really appreciated being in a dark dress. I felt a bit protected. And I felt like a part of my own watercolors from 2014, the year the war began. But like a three- dimensional watercolor, a destroyed broken female body from occupied territory trying somehow not to lose my mind.

I understand that I can't completely clean or wash or destroy this bust. And very often I was thinking that maybe it's the same as a war, that it's never- ending. An ongoing trauma.