Ekaterina Sisfontes - a life of an artist
ANXIETY
A total Installation
Readymade/objects
presented together with Lena Kolenka Rammi as a joint installation at the exhibition
INSOMNIA at Studio44 (Stockholm, Sweden)
February 2023
Anxiety
The relentless unease of perpetually missing the mark. Remaining alert when fatigue sets in. Stirring from slumber in the dead of night, gripped by the dread of overlooking something significant. Drifting back into sleep, only to awaken in the same disconcerting space. Abandoning a young child at a train station, even though all the children have long since matured and moved on. Overlooking a crucial bill payment that could jeopardize one’s shelter. Discarding keys, severing connections. Delayed for trains, planes, cars, boats, caught in a perpetual cycle. Rousing and mistaking the dreamscape for reality, on a ceaseless loop.
INSOMNIA
We are seven artists, all members of Studio44 – an artist-run gallery in the middle of Stockholm, Sweden,
who in a row of meetings investigated our experiences of insomnia and sleeplessness.
Our bodies are biologically prepared to sleep at night, among other things the sleep-
hormone melatonin occurs in the darkness of night. The opposite of insomnia is
narcolepsy – falling uncontrollably asleep. Belonging to sleep disorder, and parasomnia,
are nightmares and sleepwalking.
We can all find ourselves in the circumstance or “places” of insomnia for different reasons.
Feelings of distortion, yes, is a method of torture to keep a human being awake, without
sleep you go mad. Our thoughts and feelings change in size and form, sentiments get into
unstoppable loops, and our body limbs except for the brain, hot from activity.
But insomnia can also be an entrance to creativity, and euphoria, when not prolonged.
We just barely escaped the covid pandemic, reasons for worry and sleeplessness are
manyfold just to mention climate change and the meaningless war in Ukraine.
We take comfort in the belief that Mother Earth will survive, but what about us humans?
