An exhibition of Sasha Braulov's embroideries with such an enticing title opened in the St. Petersburg space DiDiGallery. It's difficult to write about projects that are so alive and relevant, that address each person personally and tell that person exactly their own story. But it can be done.
News of this exhibition reached me via a festival in Vyksa. This year I was fortunate enough to attend the festival and see an absolutely incredible play staged by Boris Pavlovich with the town's residents. There are no theaters or actors in the town. And the play was curious, specific, and very unusual. For example, the "scientific council" was played by elementary schoolchildren. They explained to the audience various complicated things about space, human relationships, emotions, science... One of the works in the exhibition that I'm describing depicts this "scientific council".
As you can see, the exhibition features embroideries. Of various techniques, sizes, and shapes, they all, in one way or another, speak about a difficult moment in our personal lives, or corporate life, or the life of the country — a moment from which there will inevitably be a way out and light. To get anywhere you have to row. To get through it you have to live.
There are also interactive components: several exhibits come with headphones; there are two secluded zones where you can "hide" and be with yourself, even while surrounded by other visitors; there is a very expressive box of human sins, which you need (or don't) to examine through tiny openings.
And at the exhibition's opening the guests created yet another additional exhibit. You could take a thread and a needle and embroider something important. The most frequently occurring word on this cloth, which is now displayed in the middle of the hall, is "love." It seems that exhibitions of this kind do not pass by visitors' hearts, despite the naivety of the art and the seeming simplicity of the idea.
I should note, in connection with this story, that the Benois Wing of the Russian Museum is currently hosting an exhibition called "The Message." Large, serious, and extensive, it tells about human communication from ancient times to the present day. And in this large state museum there are also works by Sasha Braulov. I mention this to add significance and to urge everyone who is now in St. Petersburg or will be there soon to visit DiDiGallery.
