Eva Pazaitis

VIRTUAL TOUR

ARTIST CATALOGUE

Containing Loss

Negotiating between part and whole that exists at the edge of the conscious and unconscious, the fragmented and intact, I discover an understanding of loss. I gravitate to subjects of mourning and melancholia intertwined with my unresolved psychological conflicts and ultimately use my work as a means of understanding impermanence.

In centering my practice in material interactions of medium and matrix, the reciprocal contacts between texture and surface strongly communicate my understanding of loss. Mediums intended to coat, heal, protect, bind, and reinforce are applied, paving the trajectory of making a suggestive action. The visual reveals itself materially onto the scrim surfaces, an engaged field energised as stretched membranes and treated as vessels that hold the enamel paint, plaster, and cement employed. A futile attempt at grief’s containment, that overflows beyond the limits of the vessel of their attempted containment, seeping through the permeable material. 

An absence - a moment of vulnerability conveyed through deterioration and separation. I explore contrasting pairs, emphasising the tension that exists with interdependent opposites: permeable and impermeable, intentional and unintentional traces, and part and whole. This display of equilibrium and imbalance is where this intrinsic idea of part and counterpart articulates a loss. A legible vestige of something intangible, a binding and holding of that which cannot be held, restrained, controlled, or framed. The transparency or opacity, permeability or impermeability, or moreover what can ultimately be seen ‘through’ the ghostly cloth all impart perspectives on navigating profound loss.

These complexities and paradoxical portrayals of both a fragmented part and wholeness emerge in the manifestation of loss’s physicality.