VyZyvanka. The Ritual Towel.
VyŽyvanka is not a book, not a piece of embroidery, not even a project.
It is a ritual, it is a prayer with a hope for a better world.
VyŽyvanka is at the same time a result fixed at a given moment and an unstoppable process.
It is an attempt to create a new reality with the language of embroidery and by means of thousands’ year old ornaments.
The project started as my artistic response to the unbearable situation when war in Ukraine and occupation of my homeland Belarus was unleashed by the criminal government of the Russian Federation. When in the three countries, where there live people who are dear to you something unimaginable is happening, the only thing I as an artist felt I could do was try and change the reality; refuse playing by someone else’s rules and instead resort to the language piercing all the world’s cultures — the mysterious language of geometric symbols.
I feel that a lot of people are lost and cannot find their place in the new world we are witnessing. At one point I myself, being a graphic artist, illustrator and designer, could not draw. I felt I had lost the skill most essential that I had thought was inseparable from me. And yet I needed a language, a means to express myself and to release the growing tension. For me, thousands’ year old symbols have become such a language and a remedy. I plunged into the eternal symbols and have built myself anew.
The therapeutic power of symbols that existed long before us, the idea of writing a new message and thus a new version of one’s life is the core of the project VyŽyvanka. The Ritual Towel.
The project currently consists of 5 parts: the artist’s book, where I developed a new meaning of the ancient geometric symbols and have told my therapeutic story, printed edition, video materials, graphic works and a master class.
VyŽyvanka. The Ritual Towel is built around archetypical geometric symbols that appeared thousands of years ago and that are retained in unchanged form in Belarusian folk art. These symbols used to be the same everywhere; they are found at the settlements of prehistoric people, recognised in India and South China, they are in our genetic code, reminding us all that we are one, equally made of stardust.
I felt the need to revive the symbolic language that currently has almost been forgotten, and with it tell a contemporary yet eternal story. The story acquires even more significance in the horrific times of Belarusian culture deprivation.
In ancient times in Slavic countries there existed a tradition of Obydenny Rushnik (the ritual towel). A special ceremonial towel was created to send the trouble away. VyŽyvanka is my contemporary attempt to use the magic of ancient symbols in the prayer for a better world.
Among many symbolic meanings of the rushnik (the traditional ornamental towel in Belarusian culture), the most important and meaningful one is the idea of it being the embodiment of the good and strong belief in its miraculous powers that can provide a person and their family with happiness, well-being and health. All Eastern Slavs believed that the ceremonial towel was a representation of the Good. Rushnik can have a beneficial effect on life, it has a magical power.
I have embraced the language of prehistoric symbols, created my own artistic form of the mystic Belarusian traditional ceremonial towel (i.e. artist’s book), telling a new story the way I want to see the world. Within a day from dusk till dawn I put all my efforts and positive energy into embroidering the new reality, augmenting the canvas of life. And in the evening of the same day, I burnt the fifth version of artist’s book in an attempt to cleanse the world within my immediate influence, filling it as well as myself with hope and certainty.
There have remained four versions of the artist’s book, each different from one another in construction or ornamental form. They are the embodiment of the design process as they are prototypes of the fifth version of the book which burnt in the ritual fire as a part of the cleansing ritual aimed for a better world, thus acquiring a new form and meaning.
