Nina Mári (UKR)

In my Offline Project I turned to the study of the question of “live” communication. After all, the present, with technological progress and all the benefits that we have received, has given rise to entirely new problems that are unique to our time. “Live” communication is quietly disappearing from our lives.

More and more often we choose to communicate online; instead of ten “live” friends, there are thousands of virtual friends who are not really friends. I was prompted to think about this topic by an old school game called ” Sea Battle,” which I suggested that my sister play. When at the end of the game I looked at the piece of paper (on which we played), I thought, what if I painted it in bright colors? The next thought was, how to encourage people to “live” communication with the help of this simple game? So the Offline Project was born.

Circumstances turned out so that the first phase of the project, when I invited my friends to play with me, came during a period of severe quarantine in 2020. And with complete isolation, it became clear that a previously unnoticed problem became egregious at one point. For us then, the game was not just a game, but a wonderful opportunity to communicate, to become closer to each other, despite the circumstances that separated us. In the second stage of the project I invited everyone to join and invite to the game their relatives, friends, those with whom the need to communicate is greatest.

So during the research, ten games were selected, which I transferred to the canvas. For the archive, I saved the schemes of these games, which I received from the participants. In addition to researching the topic of communication, I worked on the study of color theory and experimented with it. In my work, as a matter of principle, I did not use aids, such as painter’s tape.

In my opinion, the imperfection of the lines combined with the play of color creates a barely perceptible movement in the paintings, similar to breathing.