A frame within frame - a picture on the wall is the first “Androgynous” photo montage made in 2011. and never exhibited. It was a sort of a hommage to the work of Marina Abramovic and Frank Uwe Laysiepen (Ulay).
It is also a self-portrait - I am sitting with my hair connected to my other self, the male half with a distinct Adam's apple, like Ulays. Most of my work deals with a need to connect, so Abramovic-Ulay were a very interesting phenomena for me at the time, before MoMa and many other re-performances happened later on.
From the very beginning of their symbiotic relationship and cooperation, they identified themselves as one androgynous being, a unity that contains both male and female elements. They represented the two energies of opposite sexes who are attempting to merge into one, in a state of complete harmony.
But, after ten years of living and working together, they split up with their last performance “The Great Wall Walk”. Marina then stated: “In the end, no matter what you do, you are really alone.”
Such an ending concerned me- it was an evidence of the unsustainability of intensity, and they were not in a position where they could compromise-because compromises in their private lives meant compromises in their art. So I decided not to seek the Other anymore, and getting in touch with my "male" or "stronger" side was, therefore, beginning of the process of "healing” and restoring the initial One.
A photo-montage “Mmm-mmm!”is much less serious, and it questions everything I thought I had figured out. “Androgynous” is hanged on a wall for being a piece of dead art- as well as “Mmm-mmm!” which is framed and exhibited together with little take-away packages of my own hair, offered to the visitors.
Getting in touch with your feminine or masculine side quite possibly is an esoteric cliché of modern psychology, a black-and-white division of prejudice that harms the understanding of the complexity of the human psyche (and oneself).