“REST IN PEACE”

8 square feet
Interactive installation from mixed media:

("Unknown" 96x42 inches, oil colors on canvas), wood, acrylic, printed pictures, tape, fish wire, and mud.

"Rest in peace" is an interactive installation dedicated to my nostalgia and memories buried by the war.

I was willing to show the destruction the war brings into people’s lives by sharing my personal experience. I wanted to show how it feels when your home is being taken away from you while all of your memories of home and the people you love slowly fade away as they become way too painful for you to remember.

By including the painting of my dad and the film photography I gathered throughout the last few years, I wanted to create an interactive space where such a heavy subject as war can become more accessible to someone who is not familiar with it personally. While brainstorming, I came up with the idea of pictures on the floor, which will be framed, as if they were too precious for you to come closer, but at the same time, which are meant to be destroyed, and stepped on. I also decided to hang four images on the side walls, two identical images facing each other on each side, which helped me to create an even more inescapable and intimidating environment for my audience. I decided to call this project “Rest in peace”.

The instructions on the floor and on the wall say "Step on the pictures on the floor".

This piece took me five days to install and gave me a lot of pain in my lower back, but it has given me a lot of lessons and inspiration for my future work. During the installation, I learned about different techniques and constructions you can build, that will make your photography look more representative and unique. While presenting “Rest in peace” to my colleagues, I noticed that some people didn’t step on the images even after reading the provided instructions. In contrast, others did with no hesitation, which made me think about human nature and how our instincts influence our decision-making process.