Frogs and Wasps

The Frogs and Wasps project includes two installations, a series of videos and graphic works created in 2014 and after February 2022, as well as poems by Dmitry Korolev and mine. The conceptual framework of the project is provided by two poems by Osip Mandelstam of 1920 (Heaviness, tenderness—sisters—your marks are the same”) and February 1937 (“Armed with wasp-vision, with the vision of wasps”) The images of wasps and frogs also appear in the project as political metaphors (army, mob, experiments on animals and the frequently used comparison of the Russian people with a frog boiled over a slow fire, etc.) Documentation of my political actions and photographs from public propaganda events served as material for some of the works.

A series of works. Approximately 11x20x1,5 cm. Photo, paper, sunflower oil, lacquer, embroidery, polystyrene foam, plasticine, oil, 2022.

The photos are taken from the public propaganda contest “The truth is behind us!”, where Russians post various photos with flash mobs in support of the war against Ukraine. Over these photographs, the silhouettes of lying people are embroidered with red threads — either sleeping, or killed.

Installation, sizes vary. frame, ribs, papier-mâché, graphics, translucent paper, hoses, fan, oil, 2022-2023.

The title of this work refers to Dmitry Korolev's mono-poem (which in turn refers to another poem) "My fellow citizens drink water in the rain". The artificial wind supplied by the fan creates the illusion of an autumn landscape, which at the same time turns into an open body covered with a shroud.

A series of works. Approximately 21x29. Photo, paper, sunflower oil, lacquer, embroidery, 2022.

A series of self-portraits is in many ways the experience of his forced anonymity, the destruction of sociality, on the one hand, on the other hand, the experience of his face within the framework of bureaucratic procedures.

After February 24, I went out in black as part of the Women in Black campaign of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance. One of the works uses a photograph from one of these actions with a blurred face. For my safety, since the beginning of the war, I have had to close all social media accounts and delete all photos that show my face, cover up the faces of people in the photos I publish, and anonymize the people and events that I write about.