How can the illustration be conceived?

Three books make one. The work was created in collaboration with 40 people who expressed themselves on the question of their own and my (i.e. foreign) identity using visual and verbal expression through one word or sentence.

The noble-looking book "They", created from white leather and gold, contains the expressions of persons about themselves, each of them subconsciously trying to capture the best of themselves, the "luxury" that we carry in ourselves.

The book "They Me" is about respondents' statements about me. It consists of porcelain plates, strong but fragile at the same time, and sides of fine Japanese paper with illustrations in white ink. Almost invisible drawings and writing - we never see how much of what others tell us about us is true. These relationships are strong but breakable.

The book "I Them", completely made of fabric, with my comments about others. We somehow "baptize" each person in our lives. Names, "names" of people, and silver drawings are conceived in this spirit. The book evokes the feeling of a cozy, safe place, which is what our loved ones are for us.

The books together, touching each other, form a circle, a whole. Are we who others think we are or what we see in others? We are as many people as we ask. And they are what they think they are, what we think they are, and how they see themselves in others. The interweaving of identities is endless and indivisible.

The Book of Purification

I assigned a text composed of 11 genre-diverse books to approximately 50 people aged 10 to 78. The people were of different nationalities, genders and levels of education. Their task was to remove words or sentences which are unpleasant to them from the text (words, which they do not like or which evoke any negative emotions in them). The result is a book/object in which, every page that was authentic in the beginning, becomes completely different due to the purification by individual people. Each page portrays a black and white image of their world. This demonstrates that in reality there are no good or bad things, black and white, but only phenomena which each of brings to life with our approach.

The Book 48

In this case, the text was created from a combination of a pragmatic and informative description of the events of 1948 and a story of an old woman, who at that time was a 9-year-old girl. The contrast of history from the textbook and history as someone’s own past (someone´s childhood and everyday life that the woman lived, and that wasn´t recorded anywhere except in her own memory).

The object consists of two mirrors facing each other and transparent pages between them, evoking a book. It depicts "SEARCHING", the mainstay of everyone’s live. We are all looking for something, but in a different way. The goal was to create a kind of mirror of the soul, which would reflect each of us.

If we were to use the cliché "Book of life", at birth we would look in the mirror and see ourselves. At the moment of death we would see ourselves again. But we do not know which of these boards is the beginning and which the end, the boundaries are only imaginary, not real. And between them is everything. Life and its various situations, emotions and experiences.

The individual pages show abstract illustrations of feelings that we all experience during our lives, but each of us in different situations. It shows that we are all basically the same inside. The illustrations intertwine through each other and we do not know which is which – similarly as in life, emotions mix in us and cannot be separated. They also reflect in the mirrors to infinity and create a kind of infinite inner absolute.

This object has as many forms as many people look at it, because everyone has their own vision, everyone looks at it and sees only their reflection, their feelings, themselves. And so, in a way, it contains absolutely everyone.

The object is accompanied by a book, which contains in addition to illustrations also texts; a collection of various ideas that have been running through my head for a year. When I read these texts out loud, abstract scenes appeared in my mind, which eventually led to the creation of the illustrations.