photo by dane pollok
contact
email me at ray.pozivenec@gmail.com
about
Rachel Pozivenec is a ceramics mask-maker who stages and photographs dreamlike scenes to excavate potential narratives. Her work seeks to confront the inherent vulnerability of the human experience, whilst communicating the compelling and indescribable unknown in this tension. Rachel’s first generation background heavily informs the narrative of her work through a visual contemplation of ancestry and complicated identity. Her primary mediums are clay and digital photography and mixed medium (resin, fiberglass, foam) for mask commissions and fabrication work. Her work has been seen in the opera, music videos, dance performances, and claymation collaborations. She graduated with a degree in Psychology and is currently based in the Pacific Northwest.
why masks?
I often wonder what happens behind a mask. It is a bit strange - masks are everywhere and anywhere as long as humans have been around. Do we access something beyond ourselves or become more ourselves the moment we merge with a mask? I believe the answer is both.
As humans, we create endless ways to justify our existence and make sense of our place in the universe. We are chaotic in this quest, consumed in the contemporary world by an insatiable search for happiness within ever-unattainable standards of life. Meanwhile, we are grappling with the growing urgencies and injustices of a failing society and confronting a collapsing ecosystem that threatens our species survival. The search for meaning and how we validate our existence within these conditions inspires my work as an artist.
I believe masks are ubiquitous symbols representing latent aspects of being human and have historically portrayed characters that reflect this quest for meaning. In our present society, I feel the most accessible method to reach these hidden parts of our psyche is through dreams, a world filled with images governed by the subconscious. Over the years, my nighttime sojourns have given me direct inspiration when creating a mask and the world in which they live. It is an attempt to cut through society's confusion and provoke the hidden aspect of the viewer's minds forever in this universal pursuit.
My masks also reflect human's interpretation of and relationship to nature. Many of us forget the wildness existing independent of our busy lives. Animals always surround us, watching us, perhaps hoping we'll either learn from our mistakes or self-destruct, leaving them to the peace of summer quietly turning into winter. An insatiable thirst to become closer to the wild marked the start of my art practice many years ago, ultimately as an attempt to explore human’s deep desire to understand our existence in context to the world we inhabit.
Sometimes I feel a seemingly endless feeling of futility. My chest feels as though it will sink into a vast negative space beneath my ribs, all before I opened my eyes to the morning. I know I am not alone in this feeling. My work seeks to counteract the futility by reminding us of alternative spaces to connect to something outside of ourselves, whether through dreaming, nature, or reflecting on the unfathomable human experience.