RED AS A WAY OF BEING
Technical Details
Project Title: Red as a Way of Being
Timeline: 2026 (Ongoing)
Medium / Materials: Multidisciplinary installation (High-fired chamotte clay with experimental glazes, photography, text, and recorded interviews)
Dimensions: Dimensions variable (Immersive spatial installation)
Category: Multidisciplinary Installation / Ceramic Sculpture & Conceptual Photography
Project Description
'Red as a Way of Being' is an ongoing multidisciplinary research project that investigates the psychological, political, and cultural phenomenology of the colour red. Rather than treating red as a mere aesthetic choice, the project analyzes how its perception is radically constructed and altered by personal trauma, historical memory, and geopolitical contexts.
The genesis of the project stems from a close encounter with an individual bound by an absolute, near-pathological obsession with the colour red—surrounding themselves exclusively with red environments and garments. This observation initiated an artistic exploration of psychological states, leading to a series of conceptual photographs where the artist wears this individual's clothing, physically stepping into their obsessive reality. Expanding into a broader sociological inquiry, the project incorporates recorded interviews with diverse participants, mapping their personal, divergent associations with the colour.
The accompanying series of ceramic masks serves as a physical embodiment of these varied psychological and cultural states. 'Red as a Way of Being' exposes how the interpretation of red is fluid: filtered through the lens of Soviet communism for older generations, perceived as violence, aggression, and blood within war-torn regions, or associated with passion, liberation, and romance within stable democratic societies. Moving away from classical representation, the high-fired chamotte sculptures employ shifting glaze textures—from brilliant gloss to raw, visceral surfaces—to capture these contradictory human responses. Exhibited as an immersive installation combining ceramics, text, and photography, the project functions as an analytical landscape, charting how the human psyche projects its deepest fears, ideologies, and desires onto a single colour.
