The Snake

The Snake consists of a burned showerhead and hose recovered from the rubble of a residential house in Irpin, Ukraine, following a Russian missile strike. Their original purpose is unrecognisable; identity has collapsed into form. Once part of everyday domestic infrastructure, the object now appears as a serpentine body, stripped of use and held in silence.

Though its shape suggests something foreign and unsettling, it carries embedded memories of a lost home – a presence burdened by destruction yet rendered voiceless. In this altered state, the work confronts the fragility of domestic space, where objects cease to function and spaces lose the stability of identity. Rather than illustrating loss, it exposes how war transforms familiar environments into residual forms, where even the inanimate is stripped of its grounding in use and meaning.