Bed, Carpet, Brooch

installation: "Bedside Mat" (1996), diamond target (brooch, late 1990s), found objects / 2024

Pavlo Makov has an impressive collection of works devoted to targets. The artist worked on them in the 1990s, when he was interested in anonymity issues and found objects. The starting point for the study was different types of targets collected in schoolyards. Back then, targets symbolizing basic school military training were perceived as an echo of the past. However, on the eve of the third millennium, "in March 1999, the real targets and the symbol merged - TARGET became a key concept for millions of people in Yugoslavia, and I realized that it was no longer possible to use it as a sign. Life took him away from art, turning signs into real people," Makov writes in "Utopia. Chronicles," his iconic book. Targets from the past are once again turning into the reality of the present.

In the installation Bed, Carpet, Brooch, created especially for the exhibition, Makov rethinks life in fear and danger. The artist refers to his own recent experience of staying around the clock in the YermilovCenter, which served as a bomb shelter at the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The artist transforms this experience into an artistic statement, partly updating his art project of the 1990s, the Museum of Modern Life. In that project, the artist sought the vital connection between visual art and everyday life. The new installation, made up of a 1996 bedside rug, a diamond target, and found objects that created a sense of protection and shelter at the beginning of the invasion in February 2022, reflects the traces of our traumatic reality. In this way, the artist creates a new, relevant Museum of Modern Life, where reassembled artifacts become tools of self-soothing, shelter-building, and artistic expression, offering a pathway to find a safe space. This is what constitutes post-traumatic growth, which allows us to transform traumatic experiences into opportunities for the future.