Martha Volkova et Slava Shevelenko

“As an artist duo, we are always in search of the thin lines between reality and fiction. In our projects we raise questions about social reality and collective mythology and how they mutually influence one another.

Most of our projects result in room-filling installations in which objects, drawings, paintings, pictures, videos, and texts become an actor of a bigger and comprehensive narrative. At the moment the visitor enters the room the mental image, which this whole can evoke, brings him into a state where his assumptions of reality are being called into question. When one walks through our installations gradually the unexpected and the imaginary collide into a new reality. If one watches a movie there is always a screen between the story and the viewer. Which makes the line between fiction and reality clear. In our projects, since the visitor walks through them himself, that ‘screen’ is lifted and he is forced to decide for himself what is fiction and what is reality.”