Behind The Artworks: ARHAT - Dead Life (2020)

“How can I live the dead life? 

How can I leave the dead life?” 

What is the best choice - to cease physical existence or to function only at the level of the basic instincts of the animal world? 

The gallery of the underwater half-alive cemetery against the background of the ruins of a long-lost civilization among sharks and stingrays is designed to convey all the hopelessness of such an existence between heaven and earth. 

On the one hand - a tight bowstring around our necks, woven from our aspirations and dreams, which come from childhood, stretches from the sky. On the other hand - a heavy chain with a stone that restrains our movements and drags us into the abyss of hell. 

Permanent smoldering anabiosis. 

The figures are in the middle of a stones blocks corridor leading to the Angkor Wat Temple with a statue of an 18-armed Arhat (this image is a direct reference to the single "Stately Ruins", where the semi-mystical theme of the history of the Ancient East first sounded). 

The essence of the metaphor is that only by immersing yourself in the depths of your subconscious (dark ocean), you will be able to discover the treasures (Temple) in yourself and become a better version of yourself (demigod-Arhat). 

Having fallen to the depths, to the bottom, having stopped any resistance and having come to terms with the natural state of things, you emerge into the light.