The world of fairy tales and reality are closely intertwined in childrens mind. It is impossible to understand at what time they are playing, and at what time they are serious. Perhaps this border doesn’t exist.
And this gives us, adults, a reason to continue to believe in aliens, to be heroes and astronauts, to jump over the fire rivers and fight with a monsters…

Installation: frozen water, a lock of hair
2019

This stitch can be considered as the metaphysical embodiment of injury. It’s like a scar wich remains forever with a carrier and reminds him/her of the past, but, at the same time, it only symbolizes what happened without any details. We can assume that the artist wants to conduct a trauma therapy session. The renovation of the stitch means repeating the once made action, reacting that causes a wave of memories of the past and makes the participant of the events draw the line between the past and the present, and thus, break the vicious circle.

Initially titled Tongues, the project alludes to a children’s play called ‘sectrets’.lt involes burying important and valuable little objects under a piece of glass to rediscover these ‘small secrets’ later on. The content of the undeground hiding places partly visible. Consisting of several stages, Antonina Slobodchikova’s prolonged artistic activity is a kind of ritual burial. In 2012, she invited her artist friens to join in making ‘secrets’ related to one of the most important values- voice. Our voice is our right to operate tongue in the literal meaning of the word. Especially in a society where severe limitations are imposed on yhe artistic language by external forces. Don’t give it to anyone! – Slobochikova says. It were pork tongues purchased in Komarovsky Market in Minsk that were to be buried. Performed by the artists in Sevastopol Park, the action was disturbed by apprehensoin of two of its participants- Mikhail Gulin and Tatiana Gavrilchik. The project could not be completed because of the difficulties that arose.Tongues were not ‘buried’.They were intially frosen in a fridge to be then defrosted, cooked and given to a dog. In 2016, the artist finished the action on her own, burying an animal tongue not far a from her studio.