Insomnia

“Something is missing, but what this is, one does not know,” writes Bertolt Brecht in Mahagonny. Maria Sulymenko is not so much concerned with a particular loss or disappearance, a distinctive pain or grief, as with the fragility of life and the inevitability of darkness. She depicts loneliness, but also deliberately chosen solitude; angst and traumatic fears, as well as contemporary distresses and anxieties that lead to absurd situations and the imaginary. She quietly and unpretentiously questions the difficulties of simply being, of merely enduring in this world. There is no naive optimism, but there are shreds of hope, the artist claims, an anticipation of a better time. “Each moment is a leap forwards from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time’s keen edges are constantly renewed. We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our lives lived thus far and take that perilous step out into the empty air. Not because we can claim any particular courage, but because there is no other way.”