About project

SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS

Take a step and your presence becomes part of history. What you see are not merely human faces. These are the shadows of eras that formed the ground of our existence.

The faces of those who came before us. Each of them is a layer of memory: fragile and at the same time eternal.

CO-AUTHORSHIP
EDEN: Lost Coordinates / Platforms Project – Independent
Contemporary Art Fair 2026, Athens, Greece

Within the framework of the project, the painting was deliberately placed on the floor. Thousands of viewers were given the opportunity to become co-authors of the work by stepping on the surface of the canvas and leaving their own unique trace upon it. With every step, the image disappeared. Memory was being erased. For many months after the exhibition, the work absorbed the energy of the people who came into contact with it.

RESTORATION
After the completion of the project, the canvas underwent a process of restoration. However, the restoration did not become an attempt to return the work to its original state. It is impossible to erase the presence of thousands of people who became part of this work. Therefore, the restoration transformed into something else, an attempt to see what survived destruction.

Like archaeologists uncovering the remains of vanished civilizations from the earth, we turn to the traces preserved within the material of the canvas.

NEW LIFE
Today, the work is presented in a traditional vertical position. The light you see seems to have passed through all the accumulated layers of memory, revealing what had previously remained hidden. It illuminates not only the surface of the canvas. It illuminates time. The faces of the ancestors continue to look at us through time and space. They remind us that the world we have received does not belong to us. We are merely temporary custodians of that great gift which was created by countless generations before us. At this very moment, it is being decided what trace our own generation will leave behind. Whether it will become yet another layer of oblivion or transform into a foundation for the future. The answer to this question depends on each of us.

Curatorial Note

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors exists on the threshold between image and disappearance.

The work has undergone a prolonged process of physical transformation, becoming a site of collective intervention where thousands of human presences have left their own traces upon its surface. Yet it is precisely this experience of loss that has enabled the emergence of a new image, one shaped by its capacity to endure destruction.

The face that appears before the viewer does not belong to any specific individual. Rather, it resembles an archaeological artefact emerging through layers of time, memory and oblivion. Just as archaeology uncovers fragments of vanished civilisations, this work reveals the ability of matter to retain traces of lived experience even when its original form appears to have been lost.

For the artist, however, a work is never truly complete. His practice is grounded not only in the creation of an image, but also in a willingness to enter into an ongoing dialogue with it. The viewer, space, light, time and chancebecome active participants in the artistic process. Rather than preserving the image in its original state, the artist allows it to pass through transformations, losses and new incarnations.

The work shifts in condition, acquires new modes of existence and continually reveals itself anew according to the circumstances in which it is encountered. Each exhibition becomes another stage in its life, and every encounter with a viewer leaves a further layer of experience within it.

Thus, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is not only about the memory of the past, but also about the memory of the future, about traces that are still in the process of being formed. The work exists as an open system in which the image is not preserved, but continuously re-emerges.

Julia Sysalova
Curator, Art Critic – Member of AICA
Vice President, Institute of Mediterranean Culture
Research Fellow, European Communication Institute

About project

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