Patrik Proško

Transitus – site-specific installation, 350 × 350 × 100 cm, mixed materials, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India, 2026 The boundary between day and night, earth and the celestial sphere, truth and belief, or life and death is not a linear divide, but a spatio-temporal passage in which one gradually transforms into the other and the two interpenetrate. What lies on either side is not essential — what matters is the act of passing itself, at a specific place and time. The labyrinth of sediments forming the mental map of the city transforms within this in-between space into an autonomous field of experience, where previously fixed meanings dissolve and reassemble into a different perspective of understanding. What emerges in this space does not follow the rules of the external reality from which it originates. Not because it denies it, but because in the very act of its formation it gradually shifts it into a different order of consciousness — an awareness of the coexistence of multiple worlds governed by different rules, where both the origin of this awareness and its direction remain hidden. Faith, whatever we may understand by the term, does not arise from exact knowledge, but determines the direction we take in the hope that our journey has meaning. And yet, or perhaps precisely because of this, faith is what gets us out of bed every morning. The moment we lost it, even truth itself would cease to matter, because the reason to seek it would disappear. It is not about the number of these possible worlds, but about the very possibility of moving between them. Transitus does not arise as their image, but as a space in which they may meet. ———— Context of the site On the left side of the photograph, one can partially see the dome of the Ratneshwar Mahadev Temple and the smoke rising from public cremations at Manikarnika Ghat. On the right, a beam of light (sky beam light) marks the location of the nightly ceremonies against war, held on the ghats along the Ganges River. ———- Creation The installation was made possible thanks to the significant help of the local people of Varanasi — especially the residents of a four-story house, on whose rooftop the project was realized over the course of two weeks. They lent me objects from their apartments, attics, and basements, and together we lit ceremonial oil lamps (diya) and cow dung within the installation.