Shiva (2025) Glass Arrow - Ekaterina Bazhenova-Yamasaki

Specially Commissioned Glass Sculpture Pictured (Bottom) 

60 x 6 cm (at widest point)
Clear glass
2025

(1 of each, unique glass-blown sculptures) 

As part of a six-part interrelated installation: this is one of three glass ritual arrows (Shiva, 2025, Durga, 2025 and Duality, 2025) - specially commissioned for the first show at STANDALONE - custom designed by the artist and hand-blown in one single action. Together, these works investigate the intersection of symbolic archetypes, bodily subjectivity, and ritual materiality through a psychoanalytic lens. The project is situated within a broader inquiry into the construction of meaning through embodied practices and the visual economy of personal mythologies. The inclusion of three glass ritual arrows extends the inquiry into sculptural and haptic domains.

Glass as a medium is central to the conceptual architecture of the work: it is a material marked by paradox. Transparent yet reflective, sharp yet delicate, solid yet fragile. The arrows, hand fabricated are not conceived as functional weapons but as votive objects or talismanic instruments.

Together, the photographs and sculptural elements articulate a vocabulary of symbolic transformation and self-mythologisation. This practice positions itself within a lineage of contemporary art that seeks to reconcile the affective and the theoretical, the aesthetic and the ritualistic. It resists closure in favour of ambiguity and resonance, privileging the cyclical over the linear, the liminal over the resolved. The work ultimately proposes a space for visual contemplation and conceptual inquiry, one that privileges multiplicity, uncertainty, and transformation. 

EKATERINA BAZHENOVA-YAMASAKI:

The Los Angeles & London-based interdisciplinary artist explores mediums from photography, video, and experimental sound. Drawing on her in-depth knowledge of cinema and literature, she explores these disciplines as philosophical expressions, weaving their references into her artistic practice. Her music practice focuses on elements such as noise, drone, and psychoacoustic phenomena.