Currently lives and works in: Wrocław, Poland
Practice: Interdisciplinary artist
Viktoriia Tofan a visual artist, born in 1993 in Dnipro, Ukraine. Tofan studied painting at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, graduating with a master’s degree with honors in 2019. Two years earlier, she received a bachelor’s degree in easel and wall painting from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv. She has participated in numerous exhibitions and reviews in the country. She lives and works in Wrocław.
In her works, she employs traditional forms rooted in the language of not only contemporary art, including abstract painting, sculpture, objects, site-specific installations, and embroidery techniques. In her art, she often explores the theme of the presence of the “foreigner” in society and their identity. Viewing the world from the perspective of a foreigner, refugee, or migrant, she seeks answers to the question of whether, in today’s times, when a human being loses their national and political status, they also lose their inalienable natural rights. To build her projects, she often uses historical contexts, existing places, found objects, personal items, and sound. She is also engaged in animation practice. In both her artistic and animation practices, she searches for a language that would respond to the sense of alienation she experiences as an expatriate, bringing her closer to the Deaf community, for whom the Polish phonetic language is often neither the first nor the most natural means of communication. Her interest in Deaf culture and sign language has led her to create accessibility-focused artistic projects.
Areas of interest: Embroidery, Deaf culture, language/languages, history/personal stories.
Why are you a part of Magic Carpets: In my art practice I work with communities. I reach for social animation by running workshops or implementing my own projects. Magic Carpets gave me the opportunity to work with the local community, exchange of experiences, common inspiration, common being. That kind of work broadened my own horizons and gave me the opportunity to look at something from a different perspective.
Magic Carpets project
Can we still count on a place where we can feel safe in a time of war and conflict? And if so, is it a physical place with an exact location? Or perhaps it is an abstract concept? Perhaps a safe place is a person with whom we feel comfortable? During my residency in Örebro I attempted to answer some of these questions. The relationship between the public space and society itself is very important and that was a main topic of my research. During my stay, I explored how the urban space is perceived by its inhabitants and whether public space can serve as a place of comfort and where a sense of community can be found. This project was based on a concept of an individual city with safe places. During my project I worked with the residents of Örebro and explored how the landscape has changed over time and what a “safe place” means to them. By extending the notion of a “safe place” to territoriality, private property and national borders, I tried to find the answer to the question: Can we define the notion of a “safe place” as a part of the personal territory, a zone defined by invisible borders around our body?
Past projects
LET US NOT BE AFRAID OF BOBO
Type: sound installation , 280×500 cm, 2021
A lullaby is a powerful psycho-cultural phenomenon combining word and music. It is found in almost every tradition and place on Earth. In Slavic culture there exists the death lullaby, a ritual for banishing the “other” from a child. According to some sources, the Slavs believed that children are born with a bright and pure soul. If a child became capricious, cried for no reason, it meant that an evil spirit – an “other” – had entered him or her. The mother sang the death lullaby – not to her child, but to drive the evil spirit away.
Singing lullabies was also a hidden way for women to express their feelings, giving them the opportunity to tell their story, share problems and hardships connected with being a mother and wife, or air their opinions on social order.
The installation is constructed from wooden forms that remind us of the weave of a child’s cradle. Sound transducers transmit the recordings, making the forms both vibrate and function as speakers. The physicality of the vibrations of the surfaces is an invitation to surrender to the ritual of banishing the “other”, to immerse oneself in the song and to feel the sound by touching the installation or by embracing it with one’s whole body.
What inspires you as an artist? It’s hard to say, maybe the process itself. I perceive art as a process during which you go deeper and deeper and discover new and new layers.
What do you think is the purpose of art? Art is rather unintentional. Of course, it can evoke different feelings in each of us, and this is probably the main purpose of art. Evoking (spiritual, artistic, social…) experiences and deepening the context of learning about the world / broadening horizons.
Contacts