Petra Kubisova Feuerhelm

Our experience of life is always in process.
Our memories are always in process, they fade and change over the time. Nothing is ever still...

Tephra, is a series of installations and objects, recreating domestic interiors covered in volcanic ash from different areas. Inspiration is coming from a single photograph of a buried interior from last Mount Merapi explosion, Indonesia in 2010.

There are two clarifying elements of Tephra, in which the notions of time play distinct roles within the work.

First, there is the principle of how ash is represented by the scorching of everything it touches whilst hot. This includes importantly, how the ash ravages the lungs of the living organisms it encases and how it simultaneously excoriates and blisters the organism’s skin in very short timing.

Second, the ash catches and calcifies the physicality of the organism in the process. This can be seen as a preserving a ‘last’ moment under the thick layer of ash. It’s akin to a “memory-shell”. Other organisms are similarly encased in amber for long number of years without decaying. It is a method of preservation tensedunder duress, fixed in time.

This process of “remembering” the organism and the time when it is fixed within the encasement of ash is simultaneously a forgetting event and a phenomenon at the same time, like lasting taste of Proust’s madeleine cake.

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I would like the audience to experience a view into this time capsule, of a place, which could be anybody’s living room, and yet I would adumbrate this to be of a specific family in a specific moment in time as identified by the pattern of their specific furniture, specific household objects within the installation. Can an identity be established from types of furniture, windows, books, crystal glasses, or from the information which can barely be seen through the layers of thick ash?

In this tableaux there are light rays projecting from the edges of the room’s windows, which are heavily coated in layers of ash. When viewing this room, the eye ascends and one discerns a broken roof, which is like a bare look into a black abyss while also representing the hope for new life.

As a contradiction, ash in this case, represents rebirth as much as death. This ash, Pozzolan in nature, becomes particle for concrete, which is added like a coating to the original room, inducing a layering of the original family and objects within.

The stillness of the installation reminds one of the stillness of a photograph:

- windows covered in ash and letting rays of light inside, a broken roof, reminder of the outside violence, and a flower the sign of life half-covered in ash, yet silent

- morning slippers, a chair covered in ash, stopping just at the seat, a glass with a dusty knife, a children’s bicycle hidden in plain ashen site, various pictures and paintings in frames covered by ash and bags hanging from the wall heavy with the weight of it all

- objects caught in a moment of use, a chair pushed haphazardly into space, a book lying supine opened and partially examined before the event