Kurasoushchyna is one of the sleeping districts of Minsk, the place where I was born and grew up. Unremarkable, displaying typical Soviet mass architecture, a technical water reservoir popularly referred to as “a stink pot” and the railway, this neighbourhood began to develop its mythology in my imagination. I sometimes find it difficult to explain where this or that image came from or to draw a line between the truth and the play of my imagination.

Many of these works are related to my childhood memories and feelings, as well as relations with the city and Belarusian everyday life. In childhood, the typical and ordinary often becomes exceptional, full of mystery and magic.

The heroines of my series interact with the urban environment of Minsk and its suburbs in different ways. Some freeze in immobility and daze, in a state of drowsiness and melancholy immersing themselves in water like a dream, others hover in space, or escape from the city, flying or floating away from it. Attempts to build relationships with an alienated urban environment encourage heroines to blend in, fade into space, become part of it, assimilate, hide, find shelter, lay low. Sometimes the characters find themselves trapped, unable to influence the situation.

The scenes, largely consisting of various elements of everyday life, seem surreal, irrational and phantasmagoric on the one hand. On the other hand, these bizarre and absurd combinations reflect many phenomena of the Belarusian present-day reality which demonstrates quite some contradictions and paradoxes.