Dream of Sea Monsters

Year

2023

Medium

Paper/mixed media

Dimensions

42x30

Series

Dreams of Immigration

This work brings together different fairy tale systems within a single space. It combines Russian legends, Mexican motifs, and visual associations with the Soviet animated films the artist grew up with. The central face resembles a mask. Its ornamental painting suggests Mexican decorative motifs reminiscent of calavera, where the theme of death turns into a bright and almost festive image. Around this face, a fantasy world unfolds: Baba Yaga, a mermaid, a fire rooster, ravens, princes who have already lost their heads, and the learned cat from Pushkin’s poem Ruslan and Lyudmila. These figures exist as a montage of cultural memory, where folklore and fairy tale images from different cultures are layered over one another. The lower part of the composition resembles a seabed, where fairy tale characters turn into strange underwater creatures. As a result, the work appears as a dream in which childhood fears, folk narratives, death, temptation, and humor become part of one living environment. In the context of the Dreams of Immigration series, this work speaks about cultural memory that a person always carries with them. Even after migration, it continues to live inside as a theatre of images, where the native and the foreign can no longer be separated.