Eruption

40,000 sculpted and hand-painted red-winged beetles are placed in the living room. 8 months of work, more than a week of installation. The work can exist either as a single photograph or as a reconstruction of a room in a public gallery or museum space. War gives birth to werewolves: what used to be safe acquires other opposite meanings. For example, as a living room. A safe, protected space, within the limits of modern Ukrainian realities, can kill you due to an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances. A red bug infestation in a living room is a metaphor for the highest degree of vulnerability and anxiety. There are tens of thousands of them, they vulcanize from the parquet, occupying the room, settling on books and rummaging through things. This is a pseudo-mental project where I create a story about how artist R.B. wakes up one day to the sound of a tree splinter and sees a huge number of bugs in her room. This series of works includes a portrait of the witness, her room, her testimony, and a detailed visualization of the insect. The penetration of fire-bugs into one's private space as an allusion to Russia's military invasion of Ukraine.