Artist: Nini Khuroshvili
Medium: text and sound installation
- My inner desert is vast and scary.
- It makes me dizzy how unfair it can be to me.
- It’s been inside me forever, it doesn’t move or go anywhere from me.
- I’m a person of romance and emotions, but desert is still a ground for me.
- It looks like a space which keeps all of my hidden fears inside the sandy boxes.
- I can hardly dream about oceans anyway, deserts are somehow closer to me.
While being in the Błędów Desert I decided to interview a few people around me to reflect on and understand the term inner desert, inner desertification and inner habitat. While working on the research, the topic became more and more abstract but also clear in a way, since we tried to reconnect and describe our inner processes while talking about natural habitats.
- In a research I came across the fact that near train tracks there is a lot more biodiversity than anywhere else.
- When you are around construction or demolition sites, if you tear the earth apart, some seeds which had been underwood for decades come up and they bloom.
- Whatever grows in me is self-seeded, I'm not a garden.
- It's probably a bunch of seeds which had been collected by accident without me paying attention and now they are growing where they are.
- Also a lot of weeds
- They are beautiful
- I don't think I'm a national park where nothing is attended, everything is natural.
- I don't think I'm a perfect garden;
- I'm more like a side of the roads biodiversity, construction side, or postindustrial.
- Maybe I carry it (the seeds) and I don't know that I'm carrying it, and it will germinate when I'm 65.
- It’s not an immediate satisfaction.
INNER HABITAT
- What comes to my mind first is my inner field and things which I plant there, they might come from other people.
- I try to show that field in terms of talking or other kinds of ways of expression.
- But am I alone there?
- In some ways I would say I’m alone and in some other way I would say the whole universe is there with me.
- It’s like a peaceful feeling, but then there is another way of feeling lonely, a feeling of not connected to the outer world, that’s something I cannot really deal with.
- Being connected with other people and things are really important to me.
- It makes the difference between being happy and being very depressed.
- I think I lived within my inner garden for a long time and didn’t care about the outer world.
- My inner garden is actually very peaceful.
- At some point I realized that I also want to be more outside in this world and share some fruits of my inner garden.
- Outside world for me means struggle.
- But now I’m open to more different kinds of seeds and plants for that garden.
- I understand more about what my soil is good for.
- I have the feeling that this soil is pretty fertile, it was lacking water, but now the water is good and there is a need for a balance.
- I need to get more experience, plant more things and search actively for different kinds of seeds and plants.
- Some time ago it was pretty dryland, not desert but kind of flat dry soil, I think there were some very very random seeds that were carried around from the environment and very randomly flourishing.
- I try to show that field in terms of talking or other kinds of ways of expression.
- But am I alone there?
- In some ways I would say I’m alone and in some other way I would say the whole universe is there with me.
- It’s like a peaceful feeling, but then there is another way of feeling lonely, a feeling of not connected to the outer world, that’s something I cannot really deal with.
- Being connected with other people and things are really important to me.
- It makes the difference between being happy and being very depressed.
- I think I lived within my inner garden for a long time and didn’t care about the outer world.
- My inner garden is actually very peaceful.
- At some point I realized that I also want to be more outside in this world and share some fruits of my inner garden.
- Outside world for me means struggle.
- But now I’m open to more different kinds of seeds and plants for that garden.
- I understand more about what my soil is good for.
- I have the feeling that this soil is pretty fertile, it was lacking water, but now the water is good and there is a need for a balance.
- I need to get more experience, plant more things and search actively for different kinds of seeds and plants.
- Some time ago it was pretty dryland, not desert but kind of flat dry soil, I think there were some very very random seeds that were carried around from the environment and very randomly flourishing.
- I feel overwhelmed by the fertility of the soil now and I don’t want to grow everything at the same time.
- I think now there is ground for a lot of things to grow.
- I think now there is ground for a lot of things to grow.
INNER DESERTIFICATION
- Inner desertification is more connected to the unconscious process of misunderstanding the environment.
- Not negative but if I need to find this inside me, I need to check stuff which isn’t sustainable for me right now.
- Some of them could be super unconscious.
- Inner desertification is to stop communicating to my inner and outer self.
- The feeling of separation.
- Now I’m talking about heart, but for a long time I was decertified.
- I’m really grateful to experience that, because it’s part of my process right now, somehow it turns me into, or loads me with a lot of energy to move again.
- I think it’s not comfortable at all to experience inner desertification.
- Because this uncomfortable place makes you learn.
- Maybe I learned how to embrace this discomfort, that’s why I started experimenting more.
- It’s more like an observation of this process than fighting.
- From observation, we can start new and better communication.
- Not negative but if I need to find this inside me, I need to check stuff which isn’t sustainable for me right now.
- Some of them could be super unconscious.
- Inner desertification is to stop communicating to my inner and outer self.
- The feeling of separation.
- Now I’m talking about heart, but for a long time I was decertified.
- I’m really grateful to experience that, because it’s part of my process right now, somehow it turns me into, or loads me with a lot of energy to move again.
- I think it’s not comfortable at all to experience inner desertification.
- Because this uncomfortable place makes you learn.
- Maybe I learned how to embrace this discomfort, that’s why I started experimenting more.
- It’s more like an observation of this process than fighting.
- From observation, we can start new and better communication.
INNER DESERT
- I would never say that inside of people there are deserts.
- There are lands and soil.
- And each soil is connected to the specific landscape, or ecosystem as composition.
- Desert is something which cannot be commodified.
- You cannot commodify because you cannot grow things on it.
- You cannot cultivate.
- You cannot breed the animals, because it’s an undesirable place in some way.
- In this kind of place we love each other or we kill each other.
- Fertile is a human word, not present in nature.
- Nature itself is always fertile.
- The desert isn’t fertile because we cannot grow things which we can eat.
- In this sense it’s non commodifiable.
- It’s like a canvas where people can project their desires.
- It’s an open space, because the attribute of the desert is connected to the sky.
- I never imagine inside myself something flat, but more like a cosmos.
- Coming back to the soil, soil itself is a cosmos where there are minerals, bacteria, animals, particles of CO2 and water.
- I see when it’s coming, I can relate to the desert because it’s similar weaves that I can recognize.
- When I have depression, I feel very much grounded in myself.
- I don’t think that depression is always being down, being depressed is feeling detached from everything.
- Even the desert is connected, it’s not detached.
- My depression could be compared to the desert which is on Mars.
- That is like a planet and undiscovered in some ways.
- It’s also interesting that we are directly drawing this connection between depression and desert
- I would love to have softer structures and not be so rigid because I’m not linear.
- I mean educational, family, bureaucratic and so on structures and also this entire infrastructure.
- They should be accompanying us instead of suffering us.
- Actually this is also something which causes depression.
- Can we imagine the seabed as a desert?
- I decided to retire from all habits from the social environment and push myself a little bit of loneliness and silence, in order to understand better.
- It’s like sinking down and reaching the seabed of the ocean.
- There are lands and soil.
- And each soil is connected to the specific landscape, or ecosystem as composition.
- Desert is something which cannot be commodified.
- You cannot commodify because you cannot grow things on it.
- You cannot cultivate.
- You cannot breed the animals, because it’s an undesirable place in some way.
- In this kind of place we love each other or we kill each other.
- Fertile is a human word, not present in nature.
- Nature itself is always fertile.
- The desert isn’t fertile because we cannot grow things which we can eat.
- In this sense it’s non commodifiable.
- It’s like a canvas where people can project their desires.
- It’s an open space, because the attribute of the desert is connected to the sky.
- I never imagine inside myself something flat, but more like a cosmos.
- Coming back to the soil, soil itself is a cosmos where there are minerals, bacteria, animals, particles of CO2 and water.
- I see when it’s coming, I can relate to the desert because it’s similar weaves that I can recognize.
- When I have depression, I feel very much grounded in myself.
- I don’t think that depression is always being down, being depressed is feeling detached from everything.
- Even the desert is connected, it’s not detached.
- My depression could be compared to the desert which is on Mars.
- That is like a planet and undiscovered in some ways.
- It’s also interesting that we are directly drawing this connection between depression and desert
- I would love to have softer structures and not be so rigid because I’m not linear.
- I mean educational, family, bureaucratic and so on structures and also this entire infrastructure.
- They should be accompanying us instead of suffering us.
- Actually this is also something which causes depression.
- Can we imagine the seabed as a desert?
- I decided to retire from all habits from the social environment and push myself a little bit of loneliness and silence, in order to understand better.
- It’s like sinking down and reaching the seabed of the ocean.
Research and Art project: Nini Khuroshvili
Photos: Nini Khuroshvili
Curator: Jo Vávra
Sound composition: Ezequiel Melero
Publication: Oasis 2027 - Festival of Future Deserts - Bárbara Acevedo Strange
OnEarth Foundation, OASIS 2027, Festival of Future Deserts - 17–30 Oktober 2022 Wasserturm Salbke, Magdeburg
