Viktoriia Dovhadze

The central topic of Viktoriia Dovhadze’s new work is the human body as a subject of public punishment. It sways between fear and desire while experiencing pain and pleasure, either simultaneously or separately. The artist creates an immersive exploratory installation that presents the experiences of several characters interacting with the body in the area of the abnormal: an individual who must be fixed, a masturbator and a necrophiliac. The work also pays special attention to the body itself, which is finally able to be free in its secret desires.

The display is divided into three parts, each presented in a separate room. Inside those, the concepts of fear and desire mutually permeate, intertwine, assert or deny each other.

The first and second rooms are dedicated to the Monster, who shows itself but at the same time tries to hide its true face. It is hiding behind social norms, the only universally accepted truth, which is nevertheless still escapable by the Monster.

The third room is devoted to the body as a domain of desires, both hidden and primitive, that now refuses to be controlled. There is, however, another side to this liberation: at some point, desires change to hate, which suddenly becomes a source of pleasure in its own right.

Dovhadze presents a visual exploration of the border between imagination and reality. She looks at it through the lens of dreams, and hidden cravings, revealing just how blurred it is in the realm of the subconscious.

Necrophiliac

Necrophilia is a striving towards everything dead, sick, putrid and decayed. It is a passion to turn the living into lifeless, lust for destruction for its own sake.

A necrophiliac is the antipode of life.

Necrophiliacs are drawn to the darkness and the abyss. In mythology and poetry, their attention is always confined to caves, ocean depths, dungeons, eerie mysteries and imagery of blind people.

To subdue and control something that is alive, one has to kill it.

The necrophiliac disposition may manifest in the belief that the only way to resolve problems and conflicts is through violence.

A necrophiliac has no interest in other people, nature or anything alive.

Masturbator

Here, the main character is not the one attacking but rather the one being attacked. Sometimes people do not recognise this, sometimes they do very clearly.

A monster and a victim, entities that have very different stories, meet in one space.

One of them only brings violence and enjoys; the other happily takes it.

Acknowledgments to Hlib Yashchenko (knyazcotic), ТУЧА, Molly Route, Viktoriia Teolohova.