IRINA SHKODA

I am Here for You

(2024)

« Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them, and they with me. » (Revelation 3:20)

In April 2022, I left Ukraine for France. As a refugee, I entered a culture foreign to me. Being welcomed required me to adapt, to speak a new language, to submit to rules: to lose parts of myself in order to be accepted. In this project, I explore my personal experience of hospitality, both given and received.

Hospitality, according to Jacques Derrida, has a dual aspect: ethical and political. It includes a power dynamic and an underlying violence. The host takes a risk: the guest, by their mere presence, imposes an otherness that can unsettle, or even transform, the host. To give one’s home is to risk no longer being at home. It is to allow oneself to be invaded, to be dispossessed.

And yet, hospitality holds the potential to transcend these tensions. It is an act of courage and faith, a gesture that dares to imagine unity despite all odds. Absolute hospitality - without doors or keys, without inside or outside, where the host becomes the guest of their guest - is a utopia incompatible with contemporary psychological necessities. Psychology highlights that boundaries are essential for preserving our integrity. And yet, welcoming the Other is to open those boundaries, even if just for a moment.

So, how can we trust, despite everything, the Other who surpasses us? How can we let the Other in, knowing we may never understand?

…I am here for you.