The Creatures

In Russian mythology, there is a creature - a whale that floats across the endless seas with an entire village living on its back. As a proper chthonic being, it is both something that gives life and something that takes it (sometimes it swallows ships). In any case, it is eternal, and therefore very stable. This series was born in 2022 from my deep frustration with the world we live in: it’s unpredictable, unstable, and sometimes honestly stupid. For ten years prior to that I tried to change things in my country of origin, and it all ended in the war in Ukraine. I’m not disappointed in the idea that rights are something worth fighting for - nobody is going to just give them to us anyway. As the Russian saying goes: “Rights are not something you are given; rights are something you take.” But rather than trying to fix this world, I want to create an alternative - to create the perfect worlds where I actually want to live, where this necessity to fight doesn’t exist. The creatures I’ve chosen are all stable, massive, and seemingly eternal.
 So far I have four of them. The first is the Whale (2022), the original small village. The second is the Turtle (2023), a town close to nature with a vast mountain chain. The third is the Manta Ray (2023), which is a bit different from the others because it carries a real-life country on its back. The country’s name is Tuvalu - a narrow archipelago threatened by flooding due to global warming. My Manta Ray saves them. The fourth is the Hippo (2024), the capital city, complete with a railroad and a mine in its mouth, so both the people and the Hippo benefit from this cooperation: while people mine resources from its mouth, they also clean it. The fifth one will be the Crab (2026), a rural village with vineyards and fruitful seasonal harvests. So, let’s dream together! Let’s imagine that this inherently escapist series exists in the real world - and that we can actually live there as ourselves, fulfilling our dreams instead of watching powerful, rich, white men destroy everything they touch.