"Champion" series

We are living in a culture of chronic overworking and increased anxiety levels which is being increasingly normalized through Europe while healthcare systems are l funding and crumbling at the seams. At the same time, we are expected to uphold an ideal image of normalcy constructed along prescribed binary gender roles.

The series Champion that consists of commissioned glass sculptures filled with liquids confronts this reality. It juxtaposes the fragility of an ideal with the viscous matter that is absorbed by our bodies in search of that unattainable ideal. Self-care practices of healing and tending to one’s bodies are at the same time commercialized and emerge from the evolution of very necessary survival tactics. In today’s political and economic environments that are increasingly antagonistic to our mental and physical well-being, can we imagine a collective self-care that is not antithetical but integral to progressive politics and community-oriented work? Raadik’s work engaged with self-care trends both to criticize society’s failings and to imagine a positive way forward.