Artists

Alyona Hrekova (she/her) works across installation, sculpture, performance, drawing, writing and digital media. In The Border that Breathes, eight shell forms, mirrored structures, copper networks, drawings and audio come together in an interactive installation. By activating different interactive elements, visitors gradually uncover the story and influence how it unfolds throughout the installation. At its centre is a protagonist moving through a technocratic city where perception and memory become increasingly unstable. A persistent absence draws her towards «The Under», a space for relational and collective ways of sensing and knowing. Copper wires spread through the installation like nervous systems or roots. The shells carry the story through the space, becoming threshold objects between
different realities and layers of the narrative.

You describe your installations as speculative worlds. What can world-building allow you to explore that a more direct or documentary approach cannot?
I’m very drawn to speculative fiction and science fiction. I often take something I observe in the real world and think about where it could lead if extrapolated. World-building allows me to bring together different threads; images, situations, memories and perspectives, while preserving some of the complexity and contradictions of the world. For me, there is a certain kind of truth that can be communicated through a speculative world: more of a condition than a statement. A fictional scenario becomes a thought experiment that isn’t really about the future or past, but about the present. It creates enough distance to see what is already there. At the same time, I can combine things I’ve seen, read and experienced with things I dream, imagine, fear or hope for.