The Word That Changed Meaning

The Word That Changed Meaning is a kinetic sculpture examining how a single word and a single material can acquire radically different meanings depending on historical moment, language, and lived reality. The work is constructed from branches and dried cotton flowers – elements traditionally associated with nature, softness, and domestic or decorative use. In everyday global contexts, cotton is linked to textiles, comfort, and beauty. Historically, cotton was also cultivated in Ukraine, forming part of its agricultural and industrial life.

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the word for cotton has undergone a profound semantic shift. In Russian, khlopok denotes both cotton and a sharp sound such as a clap or blast. This linguistic overlap has been instrumentalised in wartime discourse, where explosions are referred to as khlopok, allowing violence to be softened, displaced, or linguistically denied. In contrast, within the Ukrainian context, bavovna has been consciously reclaimed and re-signified, often through humour, carrying associations of resilience and response.

Integrated into the sculpture is a system in which red liquid slowly drips from a suspended container, passing through the cotton elements and collecting on a white cloth positioned below. This controlled, durational action introduces a bodily and temporal dimension to the work. The red liquid transforms the delicate botanical form into a site of accumulation, marking the passage of time and the cost embedded in language. While visually restrained, the dripping gesture insists on material consequence, countering euphemistic speech with physical presence.

Through slow movement and gradual accumulation, the sculpture holds these parallel meanings in tension. The dried cotton flowers remain visually fragile yet conceptually charged, suspended between domestic familiarity and political violence. The work is not about hostility, but about language, perception, and the politics of naming – how words lose neutrality under conditions of war, and how a familiar plant can come to embody both vulnerability and strength depending on who speaks, who listens, and from which reality.