How can someone just disappear?
“Let’s all play in a place we’ve never been”
Z's with Cheyne Stokes
Sector
Public
Location
Switzerland
Year
2015
Team
Melanie Pierucci, Pieter Stienstra, Myriam Kirschke, Michael Siegrist, Wolfgang Meier
Sponsor
Algordanza
Acknowledgements
Nathalie Bösch
Z’s with Cheyne Stokes was an audiovisual installation where Vachya drew
inspiration from own life experiences to create a mystical and enigmatic
portrayal through art of what it is like to be surrounded by cancer—
the good, the bad, the insanity, the endless need to be there, the endless
need NOT to be there.
Z’s with Cheyne Stokes, an installation where video, photography, performance, and sound combine to recount a second-hand perspective on
cancer and its impact on every aspect of life for those who live it and those around it.
Press Play
Z’s is nevertheless not a factual and obvious documentation of cancer but rather a mystical, poetic, and sublime representation of the most inner feelings that appear through the process of going from being alive, to ill, to no longer there.
Through this project Vachya wanted audiences to enter a disconcerting dream full of false hopes, confusion, pure love, anger, and distorted acceptance.
After Vachya’s mother was diagnosed with cancer in November 2013, his world took a turn and became a carousel of emotions difficult to make sense of. Eight months later the battle against cancer was lost …
and the carousel kept spinning … Then Vachya decided to use this sad experience as the center of a new project. A sort of catharsis, Z’s with Cheyne Stokes served as a channel to connect with the audience and inspire them.
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Originally, the artist set out to work directly with cancer patients as the focus of the exhibition. This would have become a very literal project.
Also, the short term of the project would have meant extensive and concentrated time with patients, which would lead to a stressful work process for those in the midst of their own battle. Instead, Vachya decided
to create something abstract and pure, where he tried to bring the audience inside his thoughts and make them get lost in a distorted play between dream and reality, hoping they leave with a new sense of how in the midst of sadness solace can be also found, with a new appreciation for life and the relativity of time.
Project Sponsor
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Original artwork inquiries
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