Right Above the Grey Line
Why the name? The grey line stands for all the in between. The conflict and peace. The darkness and light. Between truth and lies. In between yesses and no's, the maybe's. Between you and me. In between worlds.
I often find myself in the in-between. The undefined. Feeling longing for something that I have never had or experienced. In a room filled with my favourite people, or on a sunny day, with a full stomach, after a conversation with my mother, I still long for something. I burn with lust for connection, yet no fulfilment has proven to fill my bottomless cup of loneliness.
Now, this project has given me a reason to wake up in the morning, feeling a different type of lust, the lust to explore this voidal space.
I believe that this project started a long time ago, before I could remember, possibly when I just began to comprehend the spaces around me.
Spaces, like my childhood bedroom, or the kindergarten, elementary school, playgrounds I used to visit as a kid. My parents' house where we moved to when I started high school, the forest that surrounds that house and the smelly lake down the road. My first, trashy apartment after I moved out to another country. The streets I walk, the subways I take, all of these spaces are empty. In my memory, these spaces are abandoned. I am the only one who appears to be in the space. I remember that there were people there, I know that there were people, but as time has passed by, their faces have become blurry and their voices disappeared with the wind. Only silhouettes that carry their blurred-out clothes and speak with a stranger's voice walk endlessly through the streets of my memory.
In my dreams, I always appear back at these spots, in between day and night, hour undefined, a grey zone. My aim is none, so I walk or I fly, and I ask myself: am I supposed to be here? What is my purpose here? Should I seek my purpose or just, be?
This investigation has appeared in a different body over the last years. I tried to represent it through various materials. I began with animation. When I was in
I began to research this project through animation, transferred to photography, opened my horizons to other materials such as clay, metal, wood and writing.
This project is an ongoing investigation that branches out to explore the rest of my subtopics in my other works. One of the main narratives is the toxicity in interspecies relationships, particularly between humans whose behaviour I intertwine with the social behaviours of insects, mostly.
How does one influence the other?
How does one take away from the other?
How does one reclaim the other?
How does one own the other?
How does one learn from the other?
How does one coexist with the other?
How does one cherish the other?
Paracity is an immersive sensory installation that leads the viewer through a fantasy landscape of clay, sand and sound.
With this project, Vanda Bednarikova explores the tangible tension between physical presence and intrusion - who, or what, becomes the invader of the installation? Is it the towering clay body leaning over the viewer, or the viewer entering this space? These questions aim to echo into a broad, possibly shared struggle with the anxiety of the unknown - a sensation many of us carry in unpredictable times. Vanda hopes for her work to channel this collective unease, using clay as a medium to make the invisible tangible: the creeping discomfort of cohabitation, the deafening silence of absence, and the quiet terror of anticipation. She builds environments where these tensions are held but not resolved - providing them with a space where the experient becomes an active participant in navigating what is fragile, spectral, or beyond control, leaving the visitor to revisit their struggle on their own.
What do you think of when you think of a parasite?
This spatial series of sculptures and prints explores the ironic similarities between domesticated housing in metropolitan cities and insect infrastructures. It examines how both humans and insects approach social construction, ranging from termite mounds to skyscrapers. Who becomes the parasite when building a social structure: the invasive, colonial human appropriating the habitats of countless insects, or the insect within human-built domains, eating its way back in? Does this only relate to insect or microbial life? Does this extend to human relationships? Where do the borders of who is being parasitic in a relationship end?
What do you think of when you think of a parasite?
By asking this question, the viewer is left to interpret on their own
This project began to take shape in 2022.
I believe this project began to take shape way before I could recognise it. It probably began at the time I started to observe and later analyse behaviours, of my own, my peers, in media I was consuming at the time and in any form that was
Get in touch with me at bednarikova.vanda@gmail.com