Jaqueline Shabo Mariia Kulikyvska
b. 1986, Stockholm, Sweden www.jaquelineshabo.com
Language at the End of Words… A Never Ending Love Story All that we strive for in everything we do, is to answer some very basic questions. Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we? Where do we go? And WHAT is THAT? And these questions get broken down into other questions, philosophical constructions of thought, language(s), categories, definitions. And when we no longer can think – We concieve. We create – Yes, I agree… some thinking has to go into that… but the result goes beyond words. Otherwise it's not art. And so finally the three of us sit in my kitchen in Östraby… There had been some confusion about the directions to get here. So I've had to wait several hours for these two unknown young women, referred to me by one of my "old" artists from the galJaqueline Shabo
lery-time… I am in recovery after my first knee-implant operation… I have restricted amounts of energy. I'm slightly annoyed. I thought they wanted to do a lesbian wedding ceremony and that we were to discuss that and my participation as a priest. It turned out to be something completely different… It had to do with politics… freedom… movement… our bodies… our spaces… where do we really enter or penetrate the (female) body? Why is the act of penetration so contaminated with aggression and violence… If you violate the spirit what happens to the body?… And what is the role of language compared to art? And I suddenly feel lifted. Electric… Full of energy. Thoughts, that I didn't even know I had, were coming out as perfectly constructed sentenses… making sense. And I could see the glitter in their eyes… the glances they shared with each other. And we had gone into "the zone"… Ah, that MAGIC! Eyes, hearts, hands, voices, explanations, hesitations, recapitulations… Laughter! We agree to agree… No, we were not having a same-sex wedding ceremony… Especially not with the metal grid "triumphant arch" with attached photos of Mashas squirrel-red-furry pussy hanging over us! Giggles! The pussy is a wonderful gift to the world of creation! But it's NOT enough as an artistic statement… at least not in that form. We can't pussify that spiritual experience of love. Love goes beyond! There must be some element of mystery to allow us to get into interaction with what we percieve. The pussy – however cute – is quite frankly to blunt! There must be other ways to describe the female experience of getting our integrity exploited, even questioned…
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