I created “Dancing around suffering” series upon my return from a Vipassana meditation retreat. I was experiencing altered state of mind and was almost unable to deal with every day life tasks. Everything seemed meaningless and I escaped back into meditation. Five-six hours a day I sat cross legged on the floor with my eyes closed watching my belly going up and down and disappearing into the bliss of nothingness.

As I was dropping one of my artworks to the exhibition I passed by the flower shop and got fascinated by the idea of death and beauty which cut flowers embody at the same time. It was my rescue. I brought them to my studio and paired with fruit and vegetables I had at home. I found peace in arranging those sets and four days went by in a blink of an eye. This process helped me ground and frame the states I had no words for. I did not meet anyone and the only human interaction I had that week was the flower lady…

As I was going from one set to another the process was very similar to that I had in a retreat — first two days were very painful. My body was aching, thoughts were all over the place and there was a lot of suffering. I was focusing on the result, and whenever I did — there was a lot of frustration in the process. On the third day I let go of the idea that this has to be a project and allowed myself not to think about the future of those arrangements and photographs. This brought a feeling of incredible release and freedom. I kept going back to the retreat in my mind — on the third day I experienced what teachers call Piti — a lot of different special effects, i.e. I felt my skin was melting onto the ground and organs inside the body were suddenly displaced. So in this series I am Interpreting many of those unusual feelings and experiences I had. By giving them form I was able to let go of them and move on. The title “Dancing around suffering’ comes from the lecture of my teacher, where he said that our life is nothing but that.

For this series I mixed analogue photography with digital and created some distortion with light filters to depict the illusory nature of our perception.