Wish You Were Here

Liza Pozdniakova

A mixed-media artwork presented as a diptych. The left panel depicts a lush green terraced landscape with distant mountains under a blue sky, across which are scattered numerous small, off-white circular paper cutouts, each bearing a unique blue handwritten Arabic character. The right panel displays a close-up of aged, textured light brown paper densely covered in blue handwritten cursive text, resembling an old letter. This text is strategically interrupted by small, circular green cutouts, which visually match the color and texture of the landscape on the left, creating a compelling interplay of natural imagery and written word.

Ever since I began my artistic practice, I have always been drawn to postcards as a medium. I began collecting vintage postcards back in 2020 during the pandemic, and have since acquired a sizable collection. These postcards have all been discarded by the original owner, hidden away in flea markets or garage sales. Recently, I joined an online platform called Postcrossing, where strangers around the world can send each other postcards, and these interactions further inspired the idea behind Wish You Were Here.

What draws me to postcards isn’t just the visual and textural elements, but also what they represent: slow communication and human connection. Wish You Were Here is a dissection of postcards using collage. Through layering and reconstruction, I explore how postcards can be revived and reimagined. The resulting pieces became hybrid artifacts that merge past and present, memory and reinterpretation.

Growing increasingly frustrated by the digital age’s constant distraction and detachment, this project became a way to reconnect with the lost sense of presence I was feeling. Writing a postcard and collage making both share the same meditative rhythm, and merging the two became a way to ground myself in a more intentional way of creating. By intervening in objects that were once meant for somebody else, I explored how new meanings can emerge from materials that already carry traces of another person’s story.

About The Artist

A high-contrast photograph captures the distinct, elongated shadows of a person and a bare-branched tree projected onto a textured light yellow brick wall. The shadow of a person in a coat stands on the left, facing right, with the larger, intricate shadow of the tree spreading across the center and top of the wall. A dark ground of small pebbles is visible at the very bottom, beneath the wall.

Liza Pozdniakova

Liza Pozdniakova (she/her) is an emerging artist from Toronto, Ontario. Through her photographs and mixed media work, Liza aims to dive deeper into themes of dreams and consciousness. Liza is passionate about creating alternate realities within her work by using different styles of editing. She hopes to invoke a feeling of familiarity and nostalgia with her art and spark creativity within the viewer.

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