The Shape I Wear (or New Borders of My Body)

In “The Shape I Wear (New Borders of My Body)”, I observe a metamorphosis of the trauma of losing limbs in war, which dissolves in water, where healing and transformation become possible. I photograph people with amputations during aquatic rehabilitation. Their bodies are partly obscured, their contours blurred into abstract forms. They exist in an in-between space where pain, memory and presence coexist. Water becomes an environment in which the familiar outlines of the body lose their clarity, opening up the possibility of seeing it differently.

All living beings share a connection to water, the environment in which life first emerged. In water, the human body enters a different sensory space, where the experience of weight, movement and physical boundaries changes. This is also why water plays an important role in rehabilitation. Through pressure, resistance and the possibility of moving with a reduced sense of bodily weight, hydrotherapy helps people gradually regain a sense of their physical boundaries. For those experiencing phantom limb sensations, this can also become part of the process of rediscovering their bodies. I see water not only as a space for physical rehabilitation, but also as an environment in which a new map of the body gradually takes shape.

I combine photographs taken in the pool with images made in a workshop where people learn to walk with prostheses. Here, the process of recovery becomes visible through objects and material traces. Plaster casts placed on pedestals resemble archaeological finds or museum artefacts, which I consider fragments of a history being made in the present. They preserve traces of change and bear witness to experiences of loss, adaptation and the search for new ways of being in the world.

At the centre of the project is an intimate change: the rediscovery of one’s own body and the formation of a new map of the self, in which absence becomes part of wholeness. In water, the body can momentarily experience itself differently, not defined by what is missing, but open to new ways of moving, feeling and existing. Wholeness here does not mean returning to a previous state. It gradually emerges through the experience of loss, adaptation and the acceptance of a changed body.

The change is also connected to my experience of living in Ukraine during the war. In this project, the body becomes a metaphor for a country experiencing the violent disruption of its own integrity. Just as a person who has undergone an amputation must relearn the boundaries of their body and rebuild their relationship with it, Ukraine lives with the loss of territories, some of which remain under occupation. These territories are not simply absent from the accessible map of everyday life; they have been violently separated from the rest of the country, while connections with them and the possibility of returning freely remain restricted. I am interested in how such experiences of loss transform our understanding of wholeness, and how we can reimagine it without denying what has been lost.

Rather than making conventional portraits, I move between abstraction and recognisability, observing the vulnerability of the body and its capacity for change. All photographs were made at the Superhumans Rehabilitation Centre and the UNBROKEN Centre in Lviv. Water, prostheses, plaster casts and bodies become material evidence of loss, adaptation and the search for new forms of existence. Through them, I observe how people rebuild their relationship with their bodies, learn to sense their altered boundaries and develop a new understanding of themselves. Wholeness in this process does not mean returning to a previous state. It emerges from the experience of loss and the possibility of continuing to live without erasing the traces of what has been endured.

Elena Subach is part of »Guest Room: Claus Gunti & Visvaldas Morkevičius«, »Guest Room: Francesco Zanot«, »Guest Room: Kathrin Schönegg & Kateryna Radchenko«, »Guest Room: Krzysztof Candrowicz« and »Guest Room: Monica Allende«.