Reverse side, 2024-ongoing

In greeting cards, people write kind words to each other. I turn to the lighter side in difficult times, when humanity is in crisis.

In secondhand shops, I looked for postcards with handwritten texts and then appropriated other people’s experiences through collages. This is how the shift happened: from private messages, postcards moved into the category of the common, accessible to viewers. I found mostly old postcards, some with dates on them: 1974, 1990, 2000. But even in the absence of dates, the meanings remain clear from the context. After all, at all times people experience the same feelings, face the same problems, watch similar external events. The variations are different, but the core remains. Such postcards are artifacts of means of communication, because through them people not only congratulated each other on holidays but also communicated at a distance.

As I read the postcards, it was as if I were experiencing what these strangers were experiencing. The enthusiastic tone of the wishes put me in a kind of postcard trance. The effect was like being covered with a warm blanket sewn from the remnants of other people’s messages. This is how the feeling of oneness with other people works. Postcards bought secondhand have become swallows from the recent private and collective past that say hello to the present time.