I see my performances as a connective tissue between all parts involved, which are not strictly human bodies but inanimate objects as well. In my sculptural practice, I wish for the performative side to be visible in the body of the sculpture itself. My engagement with sculpture is therefore motivated not only by a fascination with the object itself, but mostly with the dynamics between it and the surrounding context. I have often created my sculptures to be tools rather than self-contained works. For my Solo Show at Heden I would like to be a dancer to be able to dance with the circumstances I displayed seven sculptures and arranged them in the space for the audience to mingle with. I worked with life-size dimensions to affect the viewer on an embodied level, as the size of the sculpture makes it relatable in a bodily sense.

As the gallery was participating in HOOGTIJ, an event that would gather a large crowd in the space, I reflected on granting accessibility to my work to a larger audience and facilitating a deeper connection to it. This resulted in a collaboration with friend and colleague Alex Andropolous, with whom I staged a 30-minute collaborative performative tour where I guided the audience through the space while simultaneously expanding on some of the concepts that made up the exhibition – agency and participation, but also the alienation inherent to performativity. Being raised in a traveling circus, I grew up in a setting being exposed to the unglamorous effects of the entertainment industry on private lives of performers. The tour was led by me, speaking to the audience in Russian while being simultaneously translated to English by Alex. Though having started synchronically, as the tour progressed we would get more desynchronized and the translation confusing, creating a general feeling of disorientation and being “lost in translation’.