GRABCHIKOV Pavel

With the Eyes Closed

Belarus

2020

Dress up as a soldier, play war, mime death, repeat. On Navy Day in Russia, replica weapons convincingly look like real Kalashnikovs and the naval fleet performs demonstrations to the delight of the general public, mostly families. Elsewhere, in the real world, amid the symbols and flags of another time, the people’s voice can be heard.

Created between Minsk, Moscow and Sevastopol, Pavel Grabchikov’s world looks like an in-between, as if awaking from too realistic a dream, when we no longer know what is real and what is a fabrication of the mind. Here, the waters have been muddied and there are no captions to the pictures to guide us. These images, characterised by a continuous and omnipresent blur, evoke both dreams and the boundary between history and mere facts. This work puts things into perspective and challenges our benchmarks: how can we distinguish from one simple picture the “real” Ukrainian Revolution from parodies of it as re-enacted at public events?

About the artist

UX designer and design strategy consultant from Minsk, Belarus. Born in 1985.