Painting by Yuliia Holub

(Latin: “initiation” — a rite of passage, symbolic death and rebirth of the subject) In traditional religion, an altar serves to worship an external deity. In this object, the sacred turns inward — the altar is dedicated to the self. It is a form of honoring personal will, not through faith, but through internal work with traumatic experience. The nails are placed in the structure of the Tree of Sefirot, marking points of pain that have crystallized into dignity — not as a moral value, but as a formed capacity for self-sustaining being. At the center lies a shell — not a leftover of flesh, but a sign of transformation, a new form born after initiation. On both sides of the object are inscriptions: — Je me ferai moi-même avec ce qu’on a fait de moi (J.-P. Sartre): “I will make myself out of what others have made of me” — Solve et Coagula — the alchemical formula of dissolution and reassembly (individuation). The object demands not symbolic reverence, but physical inclination. This act becomes part of the ritual. The viewer does not observe — they enter the space of initiation.