Natalya Byrdina (UKR)

I know firsthand about Covid 19 and the consequences of this disease.

The whole year of the pandemic was and is still an incredibly difficult test for me. At this time, a series of works “Cockroaches” appeared. This episode is the most outspoken, the most honest for me. It is about my depression, about how “black” thoughts attack me, my life, my joyful moments. They make me completely insensitive, lifeless. I feel how thoughts fill me up, attacking my inner objects, which previously served as crutches, frame and roof at the same time. At such moments I feel absolutely helpless, lonely. I stop sleeping. I felt all this during the quarantine.

My lessons with students were canceled, this brought financial losses, but internal enrichment won. But the understanding that the quarantine would not end within a year gave birth to grain, that I do not control my life, that I cannot control it. Financial failures, isolation from people, friends, more and more caused chaos and anger towards themselves and the whole world. And then there was Covid, bilateral pneumonia, IVs, injections, hospitals, and this was the peak of my helplessness.

But all this gave rise to a series of works “Cockroaches”, in which manual labor is very important, labor as a hobby: crocheting, knitting, embroidery. Everything that comes into conflict with “black” thoughts. Everything that allows you not to think, not feel, be busy for a while.