When I hear the word grief, I sense a resistance in my body that feels like a hand trying to move me away from a painful path and towards another, patinated one. The mouth goes dry, and the instinctive reaction is to not feel. There is a sting and tingle in the idea of carrying a conversation with two other women around the weighted emotions surrounding the experience of loss. But I recognise the value in their work, pushing us to feel and reconnect in a world that is abruptly detaching from the beauty of the unease.
Many gallery spaces have been populated over the last few years with feminists’ contents and conversations. Yet, there is an unsettled attitude in taking the risk to talk about the wilderness of grief, fearing the gendered stereotypes of the bereaved, degenerate and unstable woman coming to the surface.
With an attempt to redefine grief work, distant from the patriarchal psychoanalytic history, and with an intersectional feminist attitude, I decided to take that path, exposing the destabilising and regenerative force that death can bring [2]. In walking this path with me, these two artists release a potential for fundamental shifts in the interpersonal dynamics between families, the artist and the material, the audience and the subject of loss.
Undusting her ancestral trauma and ritualistic wisdom, Polina Pak’s work disrupts the western attitude towards death, abortion and bereavement. Her paintings create space for nostalgia to be held with care and familiarity, as in a group of women. While exploring her mixed Korean-Russian identity, Polina finds in storytelling, superstitious beliefs, dream reading and old wives’ tales a tool to heal and make sense of the present living.
Catalysing her work around the trauma of her mother’s death, Alexis Soul-Grey’s work always returns to the child, to the time when the mother’s arms were available and meant safety. Using the mode of creation by destruction, prominent in the early years of human development, the language of youth and tenderness is used to express love, pain, fragility and care all in one mix of images that reminds us of life, and death, without fear.
Grief is instrumental to both artists to question their identity as girls, women, mothers and daughters. Pulling together a network of children and women, ancient rituals and the colours of memories, the artists offer new narratives around loss and trauma. Away from the mainstream, goal-oriented concept of the five steps of grieving, their work lays the ground for an ever-evolving healing path, where no deadline is applied but initiates a profound journey of transformation and anticipation for new life forming.
The loss of their parents and unborn children, the longing for their distant generational lands becomes the trigger to gain a deeper understanding of their identity, finding in the process of art making the healing tool to preserve love.
Quite timely, in a moment in the history of deep despair, Alexis Soul-Gray and Polina Pak make space for the connection between the individual women’s stories and universal grief. They cultivate the power of rituals, wishing for their creative process and work to become the safe space for their and our inner child.
If you are shivering, sweating, wanting to walk away, if your lips are dry and your eyes are teary, allow yourself some time to feel. The works around you are holding space for you.
Text written by Dyana Gravina
