For Rituals and Visuals

For Rituals and Visuals: A Myth Under My Skin

Collaboration at South Porch Artists Residency, Summerville, South Carolina

10th June -24th June, 2024

Ivilina and I arrived at South Porch Artists Residency in Summerville, South Carolina about ten days ago (June 10th) and dove right into our project. Thus far in our collaboration we have been responding to each other’s creations. Our hope at the residency was to experiment with the integration of text and image. Working apart and together, we have generated ideas which are taking shape. Naturally, we are drawing on the mythology and culture of the area, all of our senses open to our surroundings.

What we hear: the charm of the Southern drawl, cicada symphonies, cardinal choruses, the pulse of waves at the beach on Edisto Island, lively conversation and stories shared at our communal dinners.

What we see: rows of pastel houses, 200-year-old architecture, Spanish moss suspended in the trees, lush vegetation, Low Country marshes, palmettos, bamboo, magnolias, azalea bushes. We see historical maps of South Carolina and Africa, handwritten 19th-century recipes for “cold slough” and pickles, women weaving baskets with sweet grass and palm leaves, local art, American flags, churches galore in what they call “The Holy City,” Charleston and its environs.

What we feel: the heat of the sun in 92-degree temperatures, soupy air, the warm waters of the Atlantic, the sting of mosquito bites, cool white wine trickling down our throats, smooth shells in our hands that are painful under our feet.

Everything that we’ve assimilated since our arrival at South Porch has influenced our work, which will be displayed in an installation on the last day of the residency, part of a community salon showcasing the fruits of all of the residents’ labours over their stay.

As I write in our upstairs, barn-like studio, Ivilina is painting and cutting and inserting my poems into her visuals. Our process is complementary and intuitive, and there are moments when our work overlaps organically without the need for speech. To me this is the sign of the shared themes of our art, our shared sensibilities, and the success of our collaboration.

Text by Jaclyn Piudik

Images by Ivilina Kouneva

Further information about our collaboration activities you can find below:

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Jaclyn and I met during a residency at the Artscape Gibraltar Center of the Arts, at Toronto Islands in July 2022. A week was enough to realise that we have a similar vision in how we perceive human relationships and the stories that underline them. Being both seduced by multilayered imagery, where mythical lurks through daily life, we gradually embraced the idea of a long term collaboration.

We like to look at our project as an undemanding process where strings from various directions will be pulled while exploring the crossing points in our creative work. It is rewarding to build on narratives from different cultures linking them to our personal stories. Sense of the place which provokes “sensing” our identity forms important part in our travels.

The title “For Rituals and Visuals: A Myth under my Skin” best describes the core of our project. These are short phrases taken from two poems by Jaclyn Piudik.

We met again for a week in Gascoigne, France, July, 2023. It was a vital test for our collaborative ideas as well as to plan for the next year. With excitement and gratitude we realised that the rituals are deeply embodied in one meaningful slower paced culture. Awareness in simple daily rituals that we take for granted may unlock unexpected stories and lead to a spiritual depth. We think of this experience as the opposite of being increasingly “wired”. We perceive it as a firm support for the ecology of human relations.

Our way of working so far is exchanging visuals and words, observing their impact on our creative imagination.

We expect that in future the conversation will gradually expand including think alike creatives internationally.

With great thanks to all our supporters!