Seedling /performance

It’s tearing me apart, from the inside. I dreamed that a flower sprouting in my pocket was tearing my dress – like sunflower seeds growing on the graves of victims and invaders; like a seed that must die and unite with the earth to bear fruit. I created the performance Rozsada in April in the Miedziorytnik’s house as part of the exhibition Body Memory, Consciousness of the Forefather. The inspiration for my action was a sentence I read in an interview with Ukrainian essayist Oksana Zabuzhko right after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. This sentence: „an appeal to Russian soldiers to put a sunflower seed in their pockets, because that’s how much they can save themselves. At least some plant will grow on the ground that covers them.”

I start the action by going down to the basement, singing a traditional song in which there is a motif of flowers growing on the grave of an infanticide. I pour the Earth out of the bag, take off my shoes and immerse my bare feet in the fertile black soil, as if I were growing roots myself. I take off my red coat, and underneath I have a transparent white dress made of dissolvable fabric, slightly transparent, like agrotextile. From my purse I take out a ball of red thread, scissors, needles and flower seeds. I sew pockets to the dress, sometimes other people sew the pockets, and in some of them I put a handful of soil and a seed. After about 3 hours, I’m completely covered in pockets. I put a handful of soil and a seed into each of them. Then I cut them off and give them to people in the audience, when everyone has their pockets to fill, I am left in a dress with holes in it, through which fragments of my naked body can be seen. I take off my dress, put on my coat and shoes, and hang the dress on the wall.

I’m leaving.