First Dream

Year

2023

Medium

Paper/mixed media

Dimensions

42x30

Series

Dreams of Immigration

This work became the first in the Dreams of Immigration series. It is based not on one specific fairy tale, but on the very logic of fairy tale narrative, in which the hero enters an unfamiliar space, encounters hybrid creatures, faces trials, and gradually changes. The artist draws on fairy tales from different cultures as a universal language. In the folklore of many traditions, the hero often finds themselves outside the familiar home: entering the forest, crossing a border, arriving in an unknown kingdom, meeting talking animals, monsters, and helpers. These narratives become a way of describing the experience of adaptation and inner transformation. The central figure resembles a portrait assembled from different parts. Around it appear animal heads, eyes, and fragments of bodies. They exist as images rising from memory: at times familiar, at times foreign, at times unsettling, at times almost joyful. The work captures the moment when the fairy tale ceases to be a children’s story and becomes a way of speaking about adult experience: the loss of stability, the encounter with the unfamiliar, and the attempt to gather oneself anew. In this first work of the series, the core visual language of Dreams of Immigration already begins to take shape: hybridity, multiplicity of images, and fairy tale logic.