Natura
“I could still feel that optimism vibrating through the decades: that our bodies are full of power, and furthermore that their power is not despite but because of their manifest vulnerabilities.”
Olivia Laing. «Everybody».
It’s been a year and a half since I started working as a model in the sculpture workshop of the Tbilisi Academy of Arts. The frozen body is like a metaphor for my life, frozen the moment Russia invaded Ukraine and my husband and I moved to Georgia.
In Georgian, Russian, and several other languages, the word ’Natura’ refers to a model posing for painters and sculptors. In Latin, the same word means nature. Students look at me, study, sculpt, perceive my body as an object for learning. I document the process and results of our work. By being completely naked, I show my openness. This desperate step was taken with the hope of getting closer to others and overcoming the feeling of alienation in exile.
My body is my only home. I will hide in it, as if in a shell, among the trees, mountains and caves, among the ancient places of a foreign country. Nature is what is inside me and what surrounds me, it brings peace and consolation. I am a nature frozen in time, a model for creating a sculpture, I am a sculpture myself. I feel connected to all living creatures, but at the same time I feel alone. I’m trying to integrate into the new world without losing myself, my identity and roots. But who am I? I have character, I must be strong, I must rise up and start moving forward. But for now I look more like a person standing on the station platform while the train rushes past at great speed.
