Female Ritual

In Kurenivka's first year, artist Slava Gudenok sculpted a life-size figure of a pregnant woman from clay, right in camp. He had three days, alone, in heat and wind. It was not pretty in the glossy sense. It was made with enormous love.

Slava had dreamed of Burning Man for years, and when his friend Oleksandr Ovsianko started Kurenivka with Yaro, he was one of the first to offer a fire sculpture. The idea was a woman carrying and giving birth to a child, applied to Ukraine entering a new era. He developed it in Nikopol with artist Tetiana Maksymchuk, his partner in the Africa art studio, built a life-size test model and showed it at a fire-sculpture symposium before recreating it in the Nevada desert.

On the Friday before Burn Night the camp held its own ritual. The figure was fired on the playa near the Man, with a performance around the flames. It was one of four Ukrainian rituals Kurenivka brought to the theme Radical Ritual, and the first piece of art Kurenivka ever made in Black Rock City.

Slava now serves in Ukraine's air defense, shooting down missiles aimed at civilians.

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