The Weight of Silence

The Weight of Silence understands silence not as absence, but as pressure. Black vinyl text is positioned as a statement, yet it is fixed and disrupted by sellotape, holding language in a state of tension. Meaning remains visible, but never fully released. Silence here accumulates force, becoming dense and insistent rather than empty.

The work emerges from a long and layered relationship to histories of violence, rupture, and displacement connected to Ukraine. These histories are carried across generations and reactivated in the present, shaping how loss, responsibility, and belonging are felt rather than narrated. The work does not recount events, but holds their residue, allowing past and present to coexist as a continuous pressure rather than a closed chapter.

At its core, The Weight of Silence reflects on the artistic process as a space of self-reflection and ethical tension. It addresses the need to speak while recognising the limits of language when experience exceeds form. Silence becomes the site where what cannot be stabilised or resolved continues to exist, holding open the question of how meaning is sustained and how a future might be imagined.