2023
Аcrylic on structured paper, author’s technique.
70×100 cm
The lady astronaut floats gracefully in the vastness of open space, her body weightless, suspended between the stars. Her visor reflects the distant glow of galaxies, the deep blue void surrounding her, infinite and silent. The cold expanse feels both welcoming and daunting, but she remains calm, her breath steady inside the scafander. Every motion is slow, deliberate, as if she is part of the universe itself, carried by the currents of the cosmos.
For a moment, she pauses, her gaze fixed on the horizon―a planet looming far in the distance, barely visible. It’s not her destination, but the sight stirs something within her. There’s a deep, unshakable feeling that this, right here in the emptiness, is her true arrival. Not the surface of a planet, not the end of a mission, but this moment―floating, free, and alive in the vast unknown.
Her journey has been long, the stars her only companions, yet she feels no loneliness. Instead, she embraces the quiet, the serenity of space wrapping around her like a soft blanket. In this place where time seems to stretch endlessly, she understands that the arrival she had anticipated isn’t a destination marked by land or atmosphere. It’s this: a communion with the infinite, a merging of her human existence with the boundless universe.
The stars twinkle in the distance, indifferent but eternal. She knows that her time here is fleeting, her journey through space a momentary blip in the grand scale of the cosmos. But as she floats, arms extended slightly as if to welcome the universe, she smiles inside her helmet. She has arrived―not at any physical place, but at an understanding, a peace with the void that surrounds her.
*Structured paper
The symbolism of papers united together in the context of space-time travel carries deep metaphoric resonance, drawing on themes of connectivity, continuity, and the preservation of knowledge across dimensions. Each individual sheet represents a fragment of reality, experience, or time―when bound together, these pages form a unified narrative that transcends the limitations of space and time. Here’s a more detailed exploration of this concept: individual papers symbolize distinct moments in time or separate dimensions of existence, the binding of these pages represents the connection of these discrete moments into a cohesive whole. The pages unified symbolize how all things, no matter how disparate they may seem, are part of a single, larger structure. A bound set of papers in the context of space-time travel could be seen as a living record of the universe’s history. The metaphor here is that the universe itself is a book, and time travel is a journey through its pages. How fragile human life with each of own inventions can achieve continuity and meaning when placed within the greater context of time, the vulnerability of memory and the preservation of knowledge.