This project evolved around my relationship with the city, a relationship that has changed a lot over the past years. Infused with fear and resentment, it has definitely become more cautious. And that is sad, actually. When I then tried to process it, a very curious thing happened. I was visiting my cousins in Voronezh – both of them have sons. Every time I visit them, they shower me with whimsical stories about their neighbourhood: about that giant snake that lives in the big pipe near the milk factory or about crow-people, half human, half corvid creatures that live on a construction site. And suddenly I realised that this was the very same strategy I had used as a kid. Back then we would come up with surreal and mystical stories about certain objects or places that scared us. Those stories encouraged us to investigate those places and to overcome our fears and to ultimately claim those places as our own.

So I decided to borrow this strategy and come up with my own stories about places and objects that scare me in my interactions with the city. Most of these interactions in public spaces are with different restrictive markers. I chose these restrictive elements – such as stones, doors, fences, barrier tape – and transformed them into something between an inhuman object and an animated creature. Something with its own gravity: surreal, scary, but at the same time inviting.

I used materials that are deeply meaningful to me. I used steel, which for me represents chaos and the inability to control. And I used fish skin, which is very important to me as well. I associate it with my own being: fragility, softness, helplessness, the inability to express oneself, silence. The juxtaposition of these materials contributes to the sense of an almost-animated person.