Dear Taus
I have to start from the beginning. I spent my childhood in a small provincial city called Makhachkala, situated in the tiny republic of Dagestan - a narrow stretch of land squeezed between the majestic Caucasus Mountains and the beautiful Caspian Sea whose ethnically diverse population speaks 37 mutually unintelligible languages. There was only one theatre in the city. It was named after the novelist and playwright Maxim Gorky and its main repertoire were Soviet plays full of daily-life scenes a la Socialist Realism. My mother had a friend who worked at the Gorky Theatre as a costume designer and who also made many beautiful dresses for her. We often visited the theatre’s costume design workshop, and I would spend hours wandering around the building, walking up and down the main stage, popping into makeup rooms and workshops, watching stage and scenery people working, witnessing developments in hectic backstage life.
Already then I developed tender and quivering feelings towards theatre as a SPACE you could gather the most fairytale and unworldly experience. Later in my life I would recall those magic hours I spent in the entrails of the Gorky Theatre, how I imagined myself being „Alice in Wonderland“ and how I, some day, would return to this world of supernatural forms and light.
Now, when I look back, I understand that every bullet has its billet. I don’t want to repite the rest of my story, moving to the West, study at Yale, getting together with my X partner A.Prigov, having a child, splitting up
When I think about my early performance work, it seems to me they were the most optimal mode to articulate my practices of self-transformation whereby I explored the fictional recreation of my identity and regression into my childhood’s memory. In performances I use my body as a communication medium that enables me to get reincarnated as my favorite heroes from mythology, fairytales, history and even Art history.
I have performed naked or half naked several times. Most known performance “… oh, sweet embrace, happiness is at the end of our jorney” that I have done in Matthew Bown gallery window in Mayfair… Please find info and images in my site.
http://n-mali.artinfo.ru/sladkie.html
Later I made a piece “I Cant Take My Eyes, Off You” See some stills here
http://n-mali.artinfo.ru/eyes.html
In this performance I had to perform almost naked in the metal container because I had to illustrate an Eastern European prostitute. This work a dedicated to the troubling issues of eastern European traffic of prostitutes to the west.
