Hotel Parus: In Iterations
Varied edition of nineteen multi-plate etchings, using hardground, aquatint, sugarlift and monoprinting on copper. Completed in 2019.
Growing up in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, the Parus Hotel was etched into my childhood memory. A landmark feature of the Dnipro waterfront, an unoccupied enigma, a distant memory of Soviet Modernism. I was too young to know what that meant back then.
More than 40 years since construction started on the Hotel Parus yet it has still not opened for business. Some blame the fall of the Soviet Union, others cite poorly managed funds. After the collapse of the USSR, looters became rife and stripped the building of anything of value, including windows and doors from their frames, copper wiring and other building materials. The hulking form of Parus is a dominating presence in the shoreline of the city. An intended symbol of Soviet success turned symbol of failure, then wreckage, free advertisement space, collective eyesore, and finally a canvas for re-claiming and re-defining cultural identity on an otherwise useless and dysfunctional building.
The Hotel is a time capsule. The Hotel is a record of history. The Hotel is a shape-shifter in the eyes of the people who witnessed it erected from the ground and those who witness it sinking back into the bed of the shore, unable to act. The Hotel is an anchor in my mind, rooting me to the city I lived in, the city I could have lived in. I wonder what it's absence would feel like now. I was too young to know what that meant back then.
