Tête-à-Tête

A playful, conversation through drawing on the skin. The only rule is no words. Here, new forms of communication emerge, based on intuition, silence, and sensitivity, allowing participants to connect with their senses and inner awareness.

Skin is both a border and a transmitter. It is the most sensitive organ with 75 km of nerves, because of which the body can form tactile impressions of the world.

Skin represents our culture, ethnicity, age and health. Tactile encounter is precisely what permits sympathy and empathy to function. Here we move beyond socio-cultural representations and stereotypes.

Within this performance  new modes of language, based on intuition, imagination, and empathy, are being explored.

Experience of Irina, 22.09.25

It was really lovely to connect to the other participants through play. It made me realize that we don’t have so many chances to play and this is a wonderful way to do that.

I felt love when the pencils were moving on my skin. Both self love and receiving from others.

Dorota and Yulia created a safe and cozy atmosphere from the beginning, and their studio is very inviting. I recommend having this experience, it is very nourishing

Tete-a-Tete experience opens up a state of playfulness.
It's a natural state of exploration and curiosity. It’s also the way for us humans to develop ourselves in
a new way.

Agata, 15.03.24

Tête-a-Tête was a perfect opportunity to explore what it means to be human. Drawing on skin was centuries ago common practice for many communities. For some of them - still is. I feel like it is deeply rooted in us, and through participating in such activity, we have a chance to connect with that depth.

That kind of activity, without talking, brings a space to welcome playfulness and joy of pure creation, as well as closeness and trust.

What an amazing way to connect with so many aspects of ourselves - individually, and as a collective.

Irina, 01.09.25
Silence really helped me to leave all the masks behind the doors, just come, sit, and relax. After the process, I felt rested, restored, and I appreciated softly meeting with the people with whom I already have something very special in common.

Iva Buzhashka, July 2021

Drawing on my skin allowed me for a greater connection with my body - my hands, fingers, arms, face, eyes, ears, lips, nose.

It engendered a process of becoming aware of these parts of the body, and, interestingly, it enabled me to go out of my body, to look at it from a different perspective - an imagined vision of my face I created in the process of drawing on since I was not able to see it.

I had other moments in which my vantage point was still my body, behind my skin, while drawing on it.

Murad Zorava, 2023

As someone who loves and deals with literature, I can say that languages not only build bridges between people, they also build walls and borders. However, which words can be more effective than a person’s eyes and body? What language can suffice to express the depth of a soul?

That’s why I highly value and find DAY Collective’s silence and body-centered projects so meaningful. Because in silence, status, poverty, and wealth, local and foreign are lost. Silence is instructive. Silence is listening, smelling, feeling, getting excited and understanding. Silence is equality…

Tamara Anosovich, September 2023

I am far from the world of art, but it attracts me enormously.
Tete-a-Tete experience showed me (like in the mirror) the very essence of who I am: adventurous, but square, seeking for rules and willing to break them, searching for deep meaning in everything I do while sometimes the being is the meaning. So to me, it was a journey to myself.

"Tete-a-Tete seeks to remove one's alienation to one's own body by removing speech and allowing only the skin as one's only canvas to communicate. What it achieves is the realisation that what one may have drawn onto one's body is something ethereal, unable to be expressed after all in any other way, which begs the question of how limited are we truly when we rely only on the conscious effort of speaking to express our soul." - Tiffany Salud

Robert, 22.09.25

From my perspective, words are a very powerful tool. But verbal communication is so routinized and patterned by people that it often becomes complicated to have a truly intimate conversation, especially with someone unfamiliar. Other forms of communication can push me out of my patterns and boundaries, helping me to explore myself and others more deeply. At the same time, knowing that you and other participants are in a similarly “vulnerable” state creates a sense of additional empathy and intimacy.

The language you propose (drawing) is unusual (at least for me), but at the same time very natural. I like both of these qualities.

Laetitia, 2021
When we just started it seemed to me that an hour would be very long. But the more we got into it and more and more loose and creative time became irrelevant. In the beginning I was to much comparing the experience to a normal conversation, and behaved like that. But this felt like I didn't behave free. So I dropped this and just followed the flow and jumped into it on my intuition. It became a language by itself. And I felt nicely connected. When we came downstairs and the workers were asking how it was, I looked at the other participants and I saw a big transformation, not only the warrior face-paint but we looked so relaxed as if we just came out of a sauna.

Siavash Maraghechi

I knew I'd enjoy this experience because this is a challenge for me and for my "constantly word making brain". But experiencing it was more than I expected.

So as I sat in silence and looked and drew on my skin, my brain was as loud as ever. But it changed. I don't know how and when it happened, but at a certain point I was there and there were little words being said inside of me. I watched and drew and I even lost myself a bit in some of those moments of drawing. It felt flowing and real. Thank you for this very beautiful experience! It did good to me.

Yuri, 2021

I realise that 70% of our communication is non-verbal, but this non-verbal portion does (IMO) heavily rely on the surrounding verbal communication and the context created by that. So even if the words are not the essence of what is being said, verbal communication often seems an important occasion for non-verbal one to take place.

During our drawing session communication was exclusively non-verbal, yet the intuïtive communication by body language, facial expression and fysical interaction for me was far more meaningful than the drawing we did. The drawing as a part of the whole, for me, rather represented a fun 'formal' experiment and a vehicle for the subliminal, than a true means of communication.